Beneath It All, Part 2
by Satinette
Summary: A troubled and heartbroken Mel, fleeing from her pain during the period after Cole leaves in “Remember When,” meets up with an unexpected ally. Second part of a continuing story arc. ALL CHAPTERS UP.
1. Default Chapter

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Beneath It All, Part 2 

by Satinette

A troubled and heartbroken Mel, fleeing from her pain during the period after Cole leaves in _"Remember When,"_ meets up with an unexpected ally. The second part of a continuing story arc. 

Serious spoilers for _"What Lies Beneath"_ and _"Remember When,"_ plus more or less minor ones for the Pilot episode, _"Cloud Nine," "Roswell," "Trust," "The Beast," "Without a Trace," "Breach," "The Miracle," "Eye of the Storm," "Dark Road Home," "A Made Guy," "Back Into the Breach,"_ and before I'm done, likely most others.

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Chapter 1

"Well, you'd better get going before the wormhole closes," Mel reminded him with false brightness, quickly turning and fleeing the War Room before she completely lost it.

"Yes ... I'd ... better," Cole haltingly agreed, his jubilation, his sense of accomplishment at having Collected all the remaining fugitives abruptly evaporating as the full reality of what he'd done sank in. He could now return to the Migar System, return to Sar-Top, return to Cirron, attempt to find those much needed answers, then somehow attempt to make his way back ... 

If not ... Well, he could always just resume his life and ... 

__

What life?

Mel would be _here_, 100.3 light years distant. 

Never had his Human form felt so leaden as he slowly followed her out. He turned in the doorway and looked back, surveying the room for what he forlornly hoped wouldn't be the last time, committing to fond memory all the primitive appliances, machinery and equipment he'd taken and rebuilt or modified to another, more advanced technology. Even this cold, sterile, claustrophobic space his life had been centered in for most of an Earth year would always be fondly remembered.

His job here was done, mission accomplished, and he was going home.

__

"Home is up there." 

What a horribly cruel, twisted joke _that_ had become! 

His Mel would be here ... 

__

"Home is wherever you are."

... 100.3 light years beyond his reach. 

He was well aware of the odds he was up against, how slim to none his chances were. For all his plans, hopes and good intentions, for all his resolve, he'd likely never see her again. 

It may as well be a hundred _million_ light years. 

Clutching her upper arms, her head bowed beneath the crushing weight of despair, Mel stood in the hall by the apartment door trying to get a grip on herself, determined not to break, determined to hold back the threatening floodgate of tears for just a little while longer as her entire world withered and died. 

She'd known from the very beginning it would one day come to this. 

They both had. 

It was necessary. It was inevitable. 

But why did it have to be so soon? 

__

And why did it have to be now?

What had she said to him just a few short weeks ago as they left to hide that damn Stra'da-Brac? That there were still some 150 fugitives on the loose for him to Track down and that he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon? 

Something like that. 

She'd believed it was so. Completely and wholeheartedly. She really had. 

But now he was going. Her dearest and best friend and her only link with that alien – and hence still frightening and largely unknown part of herself – was actually leaving for good. 

Mel just couldn't fully wrap her mind around it. Not after everything they'd been through together. Not with all that had been left unspoken, even unacknowledged between them. And _especially_ not after finding out ... 

She angrily shook her head, ruthlessly pushing back the engulfing morass of pain and self-pity through sheer force of will. It was just incomprehensible to her that he'd been able to capture the rest of the fugitives in one fell swoop and was now leaving her to return to his home, another world, another planet a little more that 100 light years away. 

A light year. The distance traveled by a beam of light within a single Earth year ... She'd looked it up once. It was about 5.88 _trillion_ miles. A cardinal number followed by _twelve_ zeros. A huge, utterly irrational, totally mind-boggling figure. And Migar was one hundred point three _times_ further than that. An upper three-digit cardinal number followed by _fifteen_ zeros...

She had to face up to the fact that some selfish part of her had somehow come to believe that this wouldn't, couldn't actually happen, that there were just too many fugitives for it to be possible, that Cole would be with her for a very long time, perhaps even a lifetime. But now that he was done, now that he had accomplished what he had set out to do, he had to go back to where he came from. 

And as much as she wanted him to stay, as much as she now _needed_ him to stay, she would never deliberately be so self-serving as to ruin his happiness. 

She was well aware of how homesick he was. Months ago it had been heartbreaking to see the melancholy smile on his face when viewing Monet's Impression Sunrise' and hear the longing in his voice when he'd told her that it reminded him of a place he knew. Much more recently, the sadness in the way he'd said, _"It seems it was such a long time ago..."_ when thinking of when he'd first come to Earth was sobering. And it hadn't escaped her notice how often he'd climb up to the roof, especially on clear, moonless nights, simply to gaze at and talk to the arc of the heavens in his own tongue. 

Sometimes he'd even spend the entire night up there. 

But if only she'd known, had some sort of clue, an inkling, a forewarning that the end of his time on Earth was drawing near, then maybe ... 

She felt Cole's tall, familiar, always reassuring bulk quietly come to stand beside her as he had so very many times before. And never would again. 

"I have to do this," he softly apologized. 

As if she didn't know.

"I know you do," she quickly affirmed, trying to sound strong and positive about it, his stalwart partner to the bitter end, failing miserably in the attempt.

Cole paused before reaching for the doorknob. 

"Come with me?"

Her heart skittered, then gave a painful lurch at his shy, hesitantly offered invitation, lodging somewhere in the back of her throat. She could hardly think, hardly even breath. 

"How?"

"Travel through the wormhole. You're part Cirronian. There's so much for you to learn there."

He made it sound so simple. _Simple?_ Well, for him it was probably old hat, not that much different from a Chicago-ite taking a cab or a cross-town bus. 

But for her the prospect was both wildly giddying and utterly terrifying. 

And although it seemed to make perfect sense, it was completely irrational. 

Even obscene. 

She'd be an even more out-of-place biological freak on his distant world than she was here on Earth. While she might be the only one of her kind – whatever the hell _that_ was! – at least _here_ no one will be pointing at her and whispering behind her back. 

At least _here_ she looked just like everyone else on the planet and none were any the wiser. 

At least _here_ she could hide in plain sight.

Part Cirronian indeed. Leave it to Cole to put it so ... delicately.

She wasn't even just a freak of nature, an accident. She was part of a _planned_ breeding program of bloodlines, just like those of a well-bred French Poodle or a Persian cat or a Thoroughbred race horse or a prize Leghorn chicken at some 4-H Club were. That wasn't _anything_ like saying that someone was part Jewish or part Italian or part Chinese or part American Indian. _HA!_ Those things amounted to _nothing_ when compared to this! Even the disgusting World War II Nazi attempt at breeding a pure' line of their supposed Master Aryan Race' paled to insignificance by comparison. She'd been deliberately bred, created to be part _alien_. As in _not_ wholly of this Earth. As in _not_ fully Human. As in not fully _anything._

Hysterics, disgust, fear, horror and repulsion were the order of the day if one's salad _tomatoes,_ for piety sake, had been gene-spliced with those of an arctic-dwelling _fish_ so they wouldn't freeze into mushy pulp. She shuddered to think of the reaction of the world at large if they ever found the truth out about _her! _

__

"There will be a huge mobilization. They will hunt us down."

There'd be no place in this world she'd ever be safe!

All these years, the image in her mirror had lied to her. Her grandmother had lied to her. Her father had lied to her. Or, to be charitable about it, simply hadn't told her. She wasn't a woman, a female _Homo sapiens_, a _Human_. And she certainly wasn't a female Cirronian – whatever the term for _that_ may be! 

She couldn't even call herself a cross_breed_, a mix, a mutt, a mongrel, a cur. 

She was a cross-_species_ hybrid, a combination of two completely different lifeforms from two completely different worlds, not really one or the other, a _creature,_ an unnatural made-to-order _thing ..._

And if that wasn't bad enough, she was well aware of _exactly_ what a bloodline' is. She'd grown up in this City knowing boys who raised established bloodlines of pigeon breeds on the rooftops of their apartment buildings, just as their fathers and grandfathers before them had for generations. Aerial performing breeds like Birmingham Rollers, West of England Tumblers, American Baldheads, Flying Tipplers and Racing Homers; ornamental exhibition breeds such as Archangels, Fantails, English and German Modenas, Oriental Frills and Bokhara Trumpeters; breeds which provided tasty squabs for the table like Utility Kings, French Mondains, Runts and Carneau. 

In order to strengthen a trait or ability, it was a well-proven practice in animal husbandry to work through the bloodlines, meaning line-breeding, back-crossing and inbreeding the stock, the pairing together of close relations – up to and _including_ the breeding together of sister and brother, mother and son, father and daughter, grandparents and grandchildren. Such was perfectly okay and done all the time in the breeding pigeons, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs... 

But _people?_

She knew next to _nothing_ about her own family. Her paternal grandfather had died more than two decades before she was even born. Her paternal grandmother had died a little less than a year and a half ago. Neither of her grandparents had any living family at all. Or so she had always been told. Her father was supposedly an only child and had died not two months after her grandmother, killed at sea in a boating accident along with her stepmother and her half-sister. Her mother had died shortly after her fourth birthday, a barely remembered tiny wraith of a woman left in a persistent, near-vegetable twilight state from the severe complications she'd suffered giving her only child life. And as far as she knew, her mother didn't have any family, either. At least, none that she'd ever met or been told about. 

Could it be because they were all related? That _they_ were the family? Had her grandfather actually been her grandmother's brother, uncle or nephew? Or even her father? Or grandfather? Had her mother been her father's aunt or cousin? Or sister? Was _her_ bloodline bred that close?

In people, such a thing is called incest.

The very idea nauseated her.

How could she ever have the nerve to face them, to stand up to this supposedly enlightened, highly evolved order of beings who'd taken it upon themselves to dabble at godhood and play with the Human gene pool for their own purposes? She'd be no more than a monster confronting its creator, its own Dr. Frankenstein. 

And what's to say that the villagers wouldn't then decide to fire up their torches and go storming after the monster?

"I'm tempted, Cole..." she stammered. "Really ... Really ... But I think ... But I think a part of me has to stay here."

Cole nodded as though he'd known she would say that. He probably had, she thought. He was empathic with her that way. Always had been. Could he sense the rest? And if he could, did he realize that she didn't hold him in any way responsible for what his people had done?

"I understand."

"Maybe ... I can come and visit you sometime..." she lamely offered. It sounded so absurd, even to her. _Yeah, right! What does he think you're going to do, Porter? Hitchhike aboard the tail of a comet? Maybe hijack the Space Shuttle?_

"That would be nice," he mused. "If I can find a way to reopen the wormhole."

__

"This is no time for small talk."

"It's not like it's a flight to Newark," she lightly joked. Or tried to. 

"No, it's not," he agreed. 

__

"Home is wherever you are."

Torn, he hesitated. He was fast running out of time. Even in hyperspeed, he was going to be hard-pressed to make it. But he couldn't just leave. He couldn't. Not like this. Not with her fear and confusion, her pain and her budding self-loathing, corroding at him like acid. His own words mocked him, his emotions mocked him, his entire empty shell of a _life_ mocked him. If he didn't dare offer her false hope by telling her all he was attempting to accomplish, didn't dare mention that he'd try his damnest to make it back to her no matter the cost, then he had to at least let her know how he felt. At least tell her that. 

"Mel..."

"Don't..." she choked, her vision blurring in rising twin pools of hot liquid. "Don't say good-bye ... Please?" She'd barely been able to whisper the words without sobbing.

Cole swallowed. Hard. There was so much he had to say, so much he wanted to say, even more that he so desperately _needed_ to say. But he was incapable of formulating any words at all. 

She closed her brimming eyes as he reached an unsteady hand over and gently caressed her throat a final time.

Then, in the next moment, he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

Mel abruptly started. Disoriented, it took her a few seconds to realize that the sound she was hearing was only that of the refrigerator's compressor switching on, its throbbing, whirring chug astonishingly loud in the stark, overwhelming silence of her apartment. 

Funny how she'd never noticed it before. 

How long had she just been standing here by the door, her mind beyond numb, an utter blank? 

A minute? An hour?

More?

She really had to get to the supermarket. The cupboard was bare and there were only three sorry carrots left in the refrigerator. Hurricane Cole had made landfall once again and, as usual, what hadn't moved he'd eaten. God, could that man ever pack it away. She might even be missing some flatware, she mused. A few forks, at least. Maybe a spoon or two. 

Are there metal detectors in wormholes?

Without even remembering how she got there, she then found herself back in the War Room, her hand lightly gliding along the top of one of Cole's monitors, an unconscious caress. Sooner rather than later she was going to have to dispose of all this electronic stuff somehow, probably disassemble it first, maybe take a mallet and smash it all to smithereens so it would be completely unrecognizable. 

__

"I won't let you down, Cole."

Come hell or high water, she was going to keep his secret to her grave. 

__

"I know you won't."

His secret, as well as her own. 

__

"But some people know about us."

Her mind couldn't seem to focus, chaotically ricocheting in dozens of different directions at once, too swiftly for her to separate most of the individual thoughts. Her brain had been functioning on mostly misfiring cylinders for two weeks now. It was a wonder she hadn't been walking into walls. 

As she automatically grabbed up a navy blue T-shirt Cole had left lying out and forgotten (as per usual) to put in the hamper, she noticed that one of his window screens was locked in the up' position. Her mind seized upon that inane little detail, seeking something, anything, to hang on to and steady itself. 

Through the window was – _had been,_ she sternly corrected herself – Cole's usual route to and from the roof, scrambling up and down the side of the building with more ease and finesse than Spiderman ever could. Although such alien strangeness eventually became so commonplace she scarcely took any notice, she'd nearly had a coronary the first time she ever saw him do that. 

He'd been with her only a little more than a week when she'd been out back in her own little flower garden patch of Chicago soil, watering the merrily rioting zinnias and impatiens. She just happened to glance up as Cole's head poked out his open window, followed in short order by the rest of him. _Zip._ Up he went. As if there was no such thing as gravity. 

Mel smiled to herself at the memory. 

Her face felt as though it was contorting into an obscenely grimacing mask.

Collapsing heavily onto Cole's chair, she unconsciously whimpered as she realized that it still retained some of his body heat. _Oh, lucky chair._ She promptly snuggled in, trying to make it a part of herself as she buried her face in his discarded T-shirt and deeply inhaled. 

She immediately knew that she wouldn't be laundering this one anytime soon. If ever. It still carried his unique scent. 

And there were still more of his shirts in the hamper...

A ringing began to impinge on her awareness as she sat there for she knew not how long, at that point nearly in a trance, mesmerized by the spinning planet of Cole's still-operational screen-saver. 

Disoriented again, she rapidly blinked, trying to regain her bearings. 

__

Ringing? What's that ringing? ... Oh ... yes ... the ... phone...

But she didn't move, couldn't move. 

In the next room, her bedroom, the answering machine finally came to life. A beep and then the bleating of a familiar voice: "Mel? ... You there? If you're there, pick up! ... Please, Sweetheart! Please. ... We have to talk. We can't just leave it like this! ... Mel?"

Vic. 

Calling for the umpteenth time in a month. Still begging her to call him back, still not understanding, still having a hard time accepting the fact that she'd ended their relationship. 

Again. 

But this time, she knew, it was over between them for good. 

Why, oh why, had she ever bothered to take up with Vic again, anyway? They hadn't worked as a couple the _last_ time they tried. Or the time before that. What ever made her think the two of them might work _this_ time?

Such a dumb, stupid question.

She knew _exactly_ why she'd started seeing him again, why she continued to see him even after he'd declared his love for her and she didn't feel the same way, knew beyond question that she could _never_ feel the same way. 

She'd blinded herself to her reasons before, but now she fully recognized the whys of it. 

And she was deeply ashamed of herself for them. 

She always did have incredibly clear 20/20 hindsight.

Vic's voice just kept droning on and on, alternately upset, confused, pleading, wheedling, demanding and ... patronizing. 

Of course. 

Vic was _so_ good at that. He called it being concerned', being protective'. And he was. Very much so. Overly so. To the point of being maddening. To the point of always wanting to know where she'd been, what she'd been up to, what she was doing, who she was seeing. To the point of always being suspicious, wanting to check out' everyone she knew. To the point of always thinking he knew exactly what was best for her ... To the point of _constantly_ – if oh-so-very-sweetly-and-gently – nagging her to listen to him, to follow his advice, insisting she do things _his_ way... And sulking if she didn't. 

In short, patronizing. Always trying to run her life, never giving her the credit for knowing how to do that _herself._

__

"Oh, that's really funny, Mel ... That's really funny." 

His extreme overprotectiveness was his worst fault. 

And he'd hit excessive new highs (lows?) about it when it came to her "boarder-slash-handyman," at the last demonstrating a disconcertingly deep streak of snide contempt and animosity, no doubt fueled by his jealousy. 

Shortly before she'd ended it with him, he'd just about admitted it: _"I know I've been giving you a hard time about Cole and I know you think it's because of what we have between us ... And I'm sure a lot of that's true..."_

If he kept going, he would use up the answering machine's entire tape. 

He'd done that several times already over the past month. 

"Dammit, Mel! It isn't just _us_ we still have to talk about! All right? You two are holding up the rest of my _investigation_ here with your games! I have to know exactly where Cole took that screenwriting course!"

That did it. Mel was finally galvanized to get to her feet. 

But she had no intentions of picking up the phone. 

She really didn't want to speak with Vic yet again. She'd talked herself hoarse with him three times already – twice in person and then the third time over the phone – and there was nothing more to be said. Not unless she was willing to further hurt him with the real "truth truth" of her motivations. 

And patronizing or not, at heart he was far too good, decent and caring a man to deserve that.

The walls felt as if they were closing in on her. She just couldn't stay here any longer. It was imperative she leave, go somewhere. _Where?_ Does it matter? _Anywhere!_ Just get the hell out, get some fresh air, change the scenery. Get away ... _Run. _

"I'm sorry, Vic. I really am. But I'm all out of explanations and I'm sick to death of pointless discussion. It's just over and done with," she muttered under her breath as she rushed out of the War Room and gathered up her coat, scarf, purse and car keys. "Deal with it." Without even a backward glance, she then hurried down the stairs, leaving Vic's still droning voice behind. 

Once below she paused a long few moments, taking in the abandoned, almost ghostly atmosphere of the now defunct Watchfire, the requisite Closed for Remodeling' sign a joke in the window. 

She _had_ been thinking of remodeling, had even gone so far as to have some blueprints drawn up. But this was ridiculous.

The tables had all been pushed to the front along with the jukebox, the cigarette machine and the pool table. The chairs were stacked on the tables, the barstools lined up atop the bar. Even all the pictures had been taken down from the walls. And everything was carefully covered with protective tarps.

Cole had diligently dismantled the metal retaining wall and support braces Zin and his people had used during their drilling operation and had rebuilt the entire rear section of the bar's floor with a sturdy, steel-reinforced multi-layered subfloor, sealing off all traces of the broad, God-only-knows-how-deep crater tunneled beneath for good. He'd even re-routed all electrical and phone lines, as well as the plumbing and heating pipes, so none would ever have to disturb this back area of floor again. New tongue-and-groove floorboards lay in a large, neatly piled stack in the far aisle, ready for installation. 

Now there was no need to concern herself with finishing the job, no need to remodel, no need for her to even stay here. The Stra'da-Brac had been taken away to a new hiding place and, therefore, the entire reason her grandmother had made her promise to keep the bar in the family was no more. 

And although Cole's remote Collection had avoided their above ground location, he'd programmed the satellite's pulses to extend beneath. Since Zin's lifeforce had been Collected from the Vault below and taken back to Migar along with all the rest of those alien pond scum fugitives, there was no need to concern herself about him, either. 

Good-bye and good riddance.

The Watchfire had served its purpose and now she was free. 

She could sell it (probably get a pretty good price, too), get on with her life, move somewhere that held no memories _of_ her – or _to_ her – at all. A fresh beginning, a brand new start. 

The West Coast. 

Or the East Coast. 

An island in the Caribbean? Europe, maybe? New Zealand? Bora Bora?

She was free to go anywhere in the world she wished, for as long as she wished 

Forever, even.

She didn't have to stay here any more. She didn't even _want_ to stay here any more. 

Maybe she'd go to law school like she'd always planned on doing. 

She'd get in touch with a realtor, she promised herself. 

Later. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. Perhaps next week. Soon. Very soon.

She was free.

And Cole had left for his home world and his real life in the far-distant Migar System. 

He'd ended his Earthly masquerade as a Human and resumed being who and what he is. 

His name is Daggon. 

He's a Cirronian. 

And he's gone.

Sobbing, the long-suppressed tears flowing unnoticed and unheeded, Mel fled through the kitchen and out the Watchfire's service door, still clutching Cole's navy blue T-shirt. 


	3. Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

The beam of light stabbing through her closed eyelids was highly annoying. 

Mel grimaced and shifted position on her narrow, back-sloping perch to get out of its range, trying to make herself comfortable. It was a lost cause. She didn't have enough room to fully stretch out, she was stiff and sore, there was a crick in her neck, her spine felt as though it had been dislocated in three separate places, and her left arm was numb from shoulder to fingertips.

And the beam of light was growing wider, brighter and stronger, holding a thin promise of warmth. 

Blearily, she opened swollen, sticky-rimmed eyes, blinking, having no idea at all where she was.

A hump under her waist and hip... 

A door padded with dark gray vinyl and nubby dark gray fabric... 

A contoured arm rest... 

A door handle... 

A window, cracked open a mere fraction...

__

Shit.

She checked her watch. 7:13 in the early A.M. 

And she'd just spent the night curled up asleep on the back seat of her SUV, her purse and one of Cole's T-shirts serving as her pillow, too far out of it to even fold the seats down and provide herself with a decent bed.

Groaning, she laboriously hauled herself up into a sitting position, gingerly massaging the circulation back into her left arm and hissing through clenched teeth at the unpleasant pins-and-needles affect.

Her car was diagonally parked by a huge mound of no-longer-even-close-to-pristine plowed snow at the far end of the parking lot of a small, utterly nondescript strip mall. Left to right was the most generic of generic drug stores Mel had ever seen; the Up, Up and Away' travel agency (its logo, of course, a big red balloon); a no-name dry cleaner/laundromat; the Hair We Are!' unisex hair salon; the Hot From the Oven' bakery; the whimsically named Dinosaur Feathers' pet shop; and a small cafe optimistically called Good Eats'. 

__

Cute. 

Not.

Just across the two-lane blacktop was an old, tired, two-pump gas station littered with stacks of over-used tires and all manner of old, tired, over-used vehicles. It's weather-worn sign simply read GAS' in faded blue capital letters, hand-painted on what was once white but was now a dirty grayish-yellow. Not an oil company name or logo anywhere in sight.

The entire area was surrounded by so many towering aspen, birch, maple, oak and pine trees that it gave the impression of having been carved out of a forest. The morning sun was just clearing the tops of the low buildings and filtering through the branches, bathing her car in its warming, very late winter / very early spring light. 

Mel was positive that she'd never seen this place before in her life. 

And she had no idea whether she was north, south, east or west of Chicago. When she looked over at the car's odometer and calculated that she'd driven nearly four hundred miles, she couldn't even be certain what _state_ she was in. For all she knew, this was Canada. 

How she'd managed to get herself so far was completely blurred in pain and tears. 

All she remembered was disconnected flashes of getting in her car and driving, letting the roads take her wherever they may and leaving the Windy City far behind, functioning on what amounted to automatic pilot until the toll of emotional loss and physical exhaustion finally claimed her and she nodded off behind the wheel. The ominous spraying of the road shoulder's gravel against the car's undercarriage had fortunately snapped her awake before she could become intimate with a tree, and she'd pulled over at the first reasonable opportunity to present itself.

The parking lot of this dinky strip mall, a nowhere in the middle of somewhere.

With her luck, there was probably a comfy little motel she could've stayed in only a half-mile or so further down the road.

What had she been thinking, getting behind the wheel? She hadn't been in any rational condition to _walk,_ let alone drive a car. It was a miracle she hadn't killed herself along the way. Or anyone else. 

Stiffly, she clambered out of her car, flexing and stretching in the crisp, clean morning air, trying to get the kinks and cramps out. 

It helped her muscles and joints, but it did nothing to alleviate the dead, hollow ache relentlessly gnawing within. Not even the mingled aromas of bacon, sausages, eggs, breads, pastries and pancakes wafting across the parking lot from the kitchens of the restaurant and the bakery could do a thing to get the juices pumping or the saliva flowing. But then, she'd been so profoundly listless and depressed these past few weeks that she hadn't really had much of an appetite – so much so that she knew she'd lost weight, could feel it in the way her clothes were fitting. Food had simply become tasteless and unappealing, as difficult to stomach as her reality. 

She could really do with some coffee, though. And she certainly had to wash up. The haunted, tear-swollen face staring back at her in the rear-view mirror was a nightmare. And she absolutely hated how grungy she felt when she slept in her clothes. 

Hiding her face behind her biggest, darkest pair of sunglasses and shouldering her purse, Mel began the trek across the parking lot, feeling as if she were walking under water against the current, stirring awake a dim déjà vu memory, an echo of her own mother's slow, stiff, almost dream-like movements. 

There were a few more than a dozen vehicles parked at the other end of the lot, customers for the only two businesses open at this hour, the bakery and the cafe. The first car she came to had Manitoba plates; the second was from Wisconsin; the third and fourth were both from Minnesota. Then two from Ontario, another from Wisconsin, and a lone car from Iowa. The remaining seven were all from Minnesota. So were the plates on the van and the pick-up truck she noticed just pulling into the lot. 

Majority rules, she thought as she opened the door to the Good Eats cafe and was hit by a warm blast of coffee-and-breakfast redolent interior air. She was probably somewhere in Minnesota. 

Not that it really mattered.

**** *** **** *** ****

"Is somethin' wrong with the food, hon?"

Mel looked up from her nearly finished third cup of coffee into the concerned face of the hovering waitress and tried her best to smile at her. All she could manage was a slight twitch with one corner of her mouth. 

"Um ... No, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just..." Mel glanced down at her platter. She'd only nibbled on one slice of toast, taken a bite or two of the scrambled eggs and hash browns, and hadn't even touched the bacon. She honestly couldn't say if there was anything wrong with any of it or not. Like all food lately, it just tasted like paper. 

She had a brief mental image of Nestov happily chowing down on a brown paper bag, then cleared her head with an impatient shake. Her brain still wasn't functioning properly. It might never function properly again. "Guess I ... wasn't as hungry as I thought I was."

She could hear the quaver in her own voice. For no reason at all, tears were threatening to overwhelm her again. Her nostrils were clogging, the waters inexorably rising in her sinuses, even though her eyes were still almost painfully dry, raw and scratchy. 

In truth, she'd ordered breakfast merely as a matter of form after making such extensive use of the restroom to wash up. And she'd felt that she needed the excuse to just sit there in an overly padded vinyl booth in an overly warm cafe surrounded by a growing throng of people. It wasn't that she wanted or needed any company; she just couldn't stand to feel so isolated and alone. 

"I could zap it in the microwave for you, if you want," the waitress gently offered. "Heat it up for you? Tastes better that way."

"No. No, that's okay..." Mel thickly swallowed and slid her coffee cup across the table in the waitress' direction. "But could I have another refill, please?" 

"Sure thing," she replied, pouring from the carafe-extension of her arm. "Man trouble, huh?" 

__

"You know, you look a lot like the Cole guy in the..."

Mel shrugged noncommittally. 

__

"I'm an energy-based being."

"Recognize the symptoms," the waitress went on. "Specially with shades like those worn indoors. Must say, though. You cleaned up real well from when you first came in. Can hardly tell anymore. Amazing what eye drops, a little makeup and a good hair brushing can do for a gal, ain't it?"

__

"I made me from ... picture on the road."

Mel just looked at her from over the rim of her sunglasses. Her brain was still busily disassociating on a tangent and she didn't trust herself to speak.

__

"I can go incognito."

The waitress patted her hand and smiled sympathetically. "It's okay, hon.... Been there, done that. Too many times. So take my word on it. Ain't a one of em worth half the pain we ever give em, not even the best of em."

__

"He IS a man ... isn't he?"  
"He is male..." 

Again, Mel forced one corner of her mouth to twitch. 

__

... The word man', derived from the word Human', meaning Human male' ... 

She'd learned the hard way that was largely true. 

__

... The word woman', derivative of the word man', meaning man with a womb'... 

Yet there had been a few notable exceptions in her life. 

__

... Ergo, since he ISN'T Human...

But only one who really mattered. 

__

... HE is no more of a 'man'...

Who will ever really matter. 

__

... than YOU are a woman'.

The waitress leaned down conspiratorially. Mel noticed that she had a nametag pinned to her candy-pink uniform that read Margo'. "Listen, hon. Pretty young thing like you shouldn't have any problem at all replacin' the one who broke your heart with better. Most are almost interchangeable anyways. Like ... you see those three guys at the front table near the far end of the counter?"

Mel automatically looked over, but her gaze slid right past the three men who were mooning at her so hopefully to focus on the young woman beyond them. She'd just come in the door and was heading for the section of counter by the register clearly marked with a sign reading: Take Out'. 

There was something strikingly familiar about her. 

"They's been arguing amongst themselves over which of em has dibs on approaching you since you sat down," Margo was continuing. "Can't get their tongues off the floor."

Mel watched the young woman order a cup of coffee and a buttered roll to go from an outrageously flirting young counterman who seemed to know her well. Although apparently polite enough with him, she obviously didn't reciprocate the counterman's romantic interest. 

Where did she know that young woman from? Mel wondered. She looked like a fresh-faced college student, eighteen, maybe all of nineteen years old. Tall, slim, pretty... Wavy, barely shoulder-length light brown hair held back off her face with a colorful scarf tied like a headband... Very intelligent light blue eyes... 

"Anyways, I know they ain't all that much to look at, but they's real good guys. Good as most guys ever get these days, anyways. Decent, respectful and hard working with good steady jobs. All three of em," Margo was saying. "If you hang around a little longer, one's bound to work up enough courage t'come over and introduce himself." 

The young woman's gaze idly wandered over the cafe as she ignored the counterman's overtures and waited for her order, passing over Mel without so much as a hint of pause or recognition.

"Tell me ... Margo..." Mel began, some masochistic part of herself blackly amused by the cruel irony of the situation while the rest continued to wallow in depression. Even if she were interested (which she wasn't), and assuming that some day she'd reestablish some manner of equilibrium, she realized that she had to put her dating days behind her forever. She had no right deceiving any Human man into involving himself with the likes of her.

__

"You think my grandmother knew about this?"

And she had no intentions of ever doing so. 

__

"It would seem so..." 

Human men deserve to have wholly Human women for their girlfriends, for their wives and, most important of all, for the mothers of their children. The children _themselves_ deserve that much.

So, since she absolutely refused to allow herself to become breeding stock to produce yet another generation of hybrids, her best course of action was to resign herself to spending the rest of her life single and alone.

"Did they ... um ... ask you to find out if I might be interested?"

Mel's question was greeted with a good-natured rolling cackle of laughter. "Pretty and sharp as they come! Believe me, hon, I well know the score. I told em you probably wouldn't be interested. But, yeah. That they did. Got real pesky about it, too!"

"Thought so. And you're right. So just tell them I'm flattered but... No. No, thanks."

"_Gotcha!_ I'll let 'em know." Margo scooped up Mel's hardly touched breakfast platter and gave her a wink. "You just sit there and relax, hon. Take all the time you need. No rush. And I'll heat this up anyways. Case you change your mind."

Mel thanked her and absently nodded, watching the young woman leave the little cafe, carrying her take-out container of coffee and buttered roll in a small paper bag.


	4. Chapter 4

****

Chapter 4

As Mel sat and watched the traffic of people coming and going from the cafe it occurred to her that everyone seemed so normal, so average. Young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, handsome and homely, they all shared one very basic thing in common: they were all perfectly normal 100% Human people having perfectly normal 100% Human problems and concerns. 

Unlike her. 

It would never even occur to any of these people that they might not actually _be_ Human, that they might be part something else, part something not even of this world, deliberately created to serve the purposes of a more advanced race. 

Bloodlines of Keepers', bred to function like guard dogs. 

What part of these bloodlines was Human and what part was the something other'? And exactly how _much_ of a part was this other'? 

How much could it possibly be, anyway? Nothing untoward or unusual had ever shown up in her yearly physicals. 

So, okay. Maybe her normal body temperature was a little higher than what was considered the Human average. But it wasn't _drastically_ so, not enough to have ever raised any medical eyebrows by very much. At least, not once it was realized that 99.9 degrees was normal for _her._

And 99.9 degrees didn't even _approach_ a Cirronian's normal range! 

And so maybe she _had_ healed from the assorted bumps, scrapes, cuts and bruises she'd gotten during the course of her life a little quicker than most people did from such things. But not a single eyebrow had ever raised at the time frame.

And as far as she knew, that was really the extent of it. 

She'd grown up and developed exactly as any normal Human female would be expected to. She'd donated blood a number of times in her life and she knew there wasn't anything unusual about her blood pressure or her standard-issue, universal donor O-positive. Similarly, she'd had plenty of dental x-rays over the years, had gotten several mammographs and once, when she'd broken her collarbone (the one and only time she'd been skiing) she'd had a chest x-ray. If there was anything off' about her internal anatomy in some way, it hadn't been noticed by anybody.

And if being part something other' was supposed to have conferred some special other-worldly talents or abilities, they'd never made themselves manifest in any way before, never even gave a hint of their presence. 

She couldn't sense the auras of lifeforces or Track their traces. She couldn't move at hyperspeed. Or even at zip speed. She considered herself to be fairly bright, but she knew she wasn't a genius by any means. She wasn't much of an athlete and she didn't possess unusual physical strength. She certainly couldn't shape-shift, let _alone_ morph herself into something else at will. She couldn't exist without sleep. She couldn't just blithely ignore gravity and scale up and down the sides of buildings. She couldn't download electronic information directly into her synapses or plug herself into a computer's virtual world on a micro level as Cole did with that thingamajig ... Hell, she'd likely electrocute herself if she ever tried! 

But somehow she had not only been able to make his Collector function, she'd actually been able to Collect one of the aliens. 

She still wasn't exactly sure _how_ she'd done that, only that she had set her mind to do it and it just happened. 

And she couldn't suppress a shiver of revulsion at the memory. She'd been far too angry and pumped with adrenaline at the time to consciously react to it, but the sensation of Collecting a lifeforce had been supremely creepy, like that of an intruder passing like rancid breath through her soul, leaving behind a residue of vengeful bloodlust, somehow amplifying her mindset into an entirely different zone. 

__

"Be careful ... with that..."

__

Not an experience she would ever want to repeat.

__

"I re-energized your lifeforce then ... You can do the same for me."

And somehow, with Cole's guidance, she _had_ been able to re-energize his polarities.

__

"... find that one thing you've always been afraid of ... Don't be afraid of it ... Embrace it ... It's yours..."

She stared at the palm of her right hand, the hand that had done that, vigorously massaging it as she remembered the split-second jolt of current she'd felt, a scorching yet painless rush.

She still wasn't exactly sure how she had done _that,_ either! Or even _what_ she had done, let alone whether she could ever do a repeat performance.

So what part of her was this other' and what did it mean? 

And how the hell was it supposed to serve in securing _anything_ from the clutches of nihilistic alien beings who could easily chew up a Human army like a platter of hors d'oeuvres (sans the cocktail sauce)?

She hadn't a clue. 

And whatever happened to personal choice? To free will? To inalienable _(ha!)_ Human rights? 

No matter how noble or necessary the cause or ideal, the bottom line was that these bloodlines had been specifically bred to serve a master in a pre-ordained role, to function as little more than slaves. 

Maybe as _nothing_ more than slaves. 

Maybe as nothing more than _disposable_ slaves.

But Cirronians didn't live in a slave-based society. 

At least, she didn't think they did. 

But how would she know? It wasn't exactly a question she'd ever thought to ask. 

It was hopeless. The more she thought about it, the more she tried to make sense out of it, the less sense it all seemed to make. 

__

"You've been sitting on a bomb that can wipe out the entire enchilada, not to mention the rice and beans on the side."

Once they'd found where the Vardians had hidden the real Brac, why didn't the Cirronians just load the damn thing aboard one of their drone ships and send it out to the edge of the galaxy to harmlessly explode, just as the Migar Council did with the replica? What ever possessed them to leave it on Earth exactly where they found it, a disaster waiting to happen, entrusting generation after generation of part-Human hybrids to stand guard over it as their paltry first line of defense? 

__

And on a world that they held to be so violently dangerous that they'd quarantined it, yet!

How rational was any of this?

Answer: there wasn't anything rational about it at all. 

Leaving the Universal Annihilator just sitting around for the taking was like walking through tiger country carrying a bloodied slab of raw meat: completely irrational and totally idiotic, contrary to everything she knew about how Cirronians usually think and behave. 

If Cole is any example, then his people are a highly evolved, highly advanced, highly intelligent order of beings, the very definition of enlightened rationality. They're honest, they're known for keeping their word, and they live up to their responsibilities to a fault. And she knew that their very law demands that they pay the price for whatever choices they make... 

But is Cole a proper example to go by? It wasn't as if she'd ever known another of his kind. What did she really know about Cirronians and their world beyond what he had told her? And come to think of it, he really hadn't told her all that much. 

__

"The Vardians had shipped the device someplace far away for safe keeping until they were ready to use it."

Earth may well have been "a sleepy little rock back then," not technologically advanced, exactly as Cole had said it was, but that's certainly no longer the case. 

__

"There's a thermonuclear device capable of vaporizing an entire planet sitting in the back of my car ... Can you be a little more reassuring?"

The whole thing made for such lousy reasoning.

The price for not destroying the Brac once and for all was to issue an open invitation, either for the Vardians to eventually return to Earth and seek to reclaim it so that they _could_ use it... 

... _OR_ for one of the legions of Human madmen or fanatics or terrorists, driven by their own personal cravings for power and fired by their hatreds, their lust for violence and their thirst for blood, to stumble upon it and try to use it for their own ends. 

One way or another, there would be a price to pay for not disposing of it. The only question was, _who_ would be doing the paying here? Earth? The Cirronians alone? All of Migar? Everyone?

And since the Brac was _still_ around, all these threats still remained!

Was she alone now supposed to stand guard and protect it in its new hiding place as Mel Porter, Warrior Princess _(Yeah, right!)_ if more Vardians came looking for it? Just how was she supposed to do that? And with what? Hell, she had a hard enough time guarding her little backyard flower garden from aphids and Japanese beetles!

This whole thing was surreal insane! Not even the most _irrational_ race of people would ever _think_ of being this careless with such a weapon of total annihilation!

So what the hell is really going on here? 

__

"People who would eventually become ... Keepers of a Dark Secret."

What exactly was (is?) the Dark Secret' they (and she) are supposed to be keeping? 

It couldn't be the Brac itself simply because there's the mythic' story about it. And at least some Vardians and other Migarians are aware that the myth is true. 

Hence, it's only still a secret from Humans.

So why had the Cirronians gone to all this trouble? 

Did it have something to do with the secret being Dark'? 

If so, could there have been another reason for creating the bloodlines? 

And the word bloodlines' is a plural. Are there more like her somewhere? Or more that maybe _aren't _like her somewhere? Do any of them know what they are? And where are they and how could she recognize them? 

Or would she even want to? 

__

And why wasn't she ever told anything? 

She simply couldn't believe that both her grandmother and her father thought it unworthy of mentioning! Her grandmother, at least, _must_ have known something. She _had_ to. She had made her promise not to sell the Watchfire. And she'd written down the translation of some of the Key's Vardian glyphs in her diary. But Mel had read her entire diary from cover to cover – three times, in fact – and it said nothing at all, didn't even say what the Key was _for._

And if Jess hadn't accidentally found that wooden box tucked all the way in the back of the cubbyhole, she would never even have had the diary. _Or_ the Key. 

And where do her mother and father fit into all of this and how much did they know? Were they hybrids as well? Were her grandparents? Or were any of them fully Human? Or fully Cirronian?

No matter which approach she tried to use to analyze it all, the Gordian Knot held fast, refused to untangle, refused to even loosen. There were just too many multiplying and inter-related questions with virtually no answers that made any sense to her. The only thing she was positive about was that she had to be missing a good many important pieces of information to this puzzle. 

Since she could in no way be certain of what she would be looking for (let _alone_ where she should look for it!), without Cole's assistance it was unlikely that she'd ever have a prayer of finding any of those missing pieces. 

Or even recognizing them if she did. 

What was she? _Why_ was she? And _how?_

This last was the one question her mind kept skittering around, afraid to examine it too closely, even more afraid of the labyrinth of directions any answers would take her. Yet it was also the one question that haunted her, the one question her unchecked thoughts kept insisting on returning to.

What had the Cirronians done and how exactly had they done it? Did they just arrive on Earth one fine day and announce to the Humans they found that they were going to impregnate the women and breed them like cattle? Or were they sneaky and insidious about it, morphing into Human form and then pretending to _be_ Human, just as Cole had to do, and not clueing the people in to what was happening and what they were doing to them? 

As much as these thoughts repulsed her, she had to admit to their possibility. She knew that Cirronians were very pragmatic when it came to reproduction, well aware that their mates were not necessarily their best genetic compliment for producing offspring. In fact, _usually_ weren't the best genetic compliment. Since they held that procreation must always be responsible, a Cirronian's biological sire and his father weren't often the same individual and weren't expected to be. A female joining with another male during her High Season did not change the strong pair bond she had with her mate and her behavior couldn't be equated with the Human concepts of immorality or hedonism. For their part, males fathered the offspring their mates birthed. There was no regard as to whether it was their biological child or not for such wasn't considered either relevant or important. 

Wouldn't they have had to do much the same type of thing with Humans to establish their bloodlines, to develop the Keepers' they needed?

The very essence of animal domestication is in the strict control of reproduction, in mandating who should breed with who and who shouldn't breed at all, all to choreograph the development of bloodlines in a predetermined direction conforming with certain parameters – be it to lay more eggs or to have more meat or to grow denser wool or simply to exhibit some Human concept of beauty. There would be no such thing as draft horses or lapdogs or beef cattle or Siamese cats or anything else if these animals hadn't been specifically designed and bred for their qualities. 

Could the Cirronians have done such things with Humans? 

Would they have?

Wouldn't they have _had_ to?

Was it even worth her trying to find out? 

Could she live with herself if she didn't at least make the attempt?

Could she live with herself if she did?

Her whirling thoughts chasing after each other in overlapping spirals, Mel pressed her splayed fingertips to her temples, as if she could quell the turmoil in her brain if she could just somehow exert enough physical pressure. Her mind felt clotted with pain and confusion, thick with the heavy liquid of grief. She was afraid that if she shook her head in an attempt to clear it, it would emit squishing and gurgling sounds. 

She needed help.

__

"I need your help, Mel."

A five-word request, a plea that had brought her life to a previously unimaginable level of strange and completely changed her and her world forever. 

A five word request from an alien being who then put his complete faith and trust in her, who had simply surrendered himself entirely into her hands. 

A five-word request she hadn't been able to refuse, never even occurred to her to refuse. 

__

"That was instinct, wasn't it?"

It had probably been the summoning voice of instinct operating on the both of them. Something within the blood of each of them had recognized the other and had responded, something resonating in the marrow of their bones, the voice of racial memory speaking through the elegant double helix of chromosomes and genes. 

Although she really didn't understand it, the concept itself certainly went a long way to explaining their affinity, why the two of them had been so drawn to each other, why they had been so accepting and accommodating of each other from the very start, long before there was ever any rational reason for either of them to do so. 

Hell, how many women would've picked up a man like him from the side of the road under circumstances like that? When she'd first laid eyes on him, she'd thought he was a total pervert. He'd been in his underwear and completely incoherent, staggering around as if he were drunk or stoned out of his gourd. Even _she_ had recognized that offering him a ride was nuts! 

But she hadn't been able to just drive away and leave him there. 

And from there she had just proceeded as if it had been the most normal and natural thing in the world for a woman to not only have picked up a very weird near-naked man from the side of the road, but to have dressed him in her clothes, taken him into her home – and then _kept_ him!

In the beginning he had made her feel like a teacher with a gifted student, sometimes like a mother trying to cope with a highly precocious child, still other times like a big sister tutoring a baby brother. More than just occasionally, _she_ had felt like the baby sister to _his_ big brother. And then sometimes there were those unbidden sparks he inspired in her and she'd get all flustered, hot and bothered, not having a clue how to handle it. And he ... Well, he just seemed innocently oblivious to the impact he was having on her without ever even trying. 

He had ended up turning her life upside down and inside out many times over; had made her laugh and get angry and irritated and frustrated and annoyed and completely exasperated; had sometimes badly freaked her out and frightened her; and had often maddened her and delighted her and confused her and caused her to fret, obsess and worry more than anyone else she'd ever known. 

But life with him had also been undeniably exciting, surprising and challenging, even exhilarating. 

And now she'd never see him again... 

__

No! No tears! She angrily berated herself, swiping a hand at her eyes, forcing them back. She was _not_ going to cry. She refused to allow it. She had no right to selfishly weep and mourn. 

Cole had never been hers, never could have been hers. 

He was home now, back in his own world, done with the necessity of his charade and where he belonged. 

__

"Yes, it does feel pretty good..."

She should be happy for him

She should be proud of herself for having helped him.

So why did she feel as though she'd so willingly dug her own grave, climbed down into it and then ordered the flowers? 

She'd known from the start that his stay here on Earth would only be temporary, that he'd be returning to the Migar System when his mission was done, that she couldn't afford to get too emotionally attached to him. 

And she had tried not to. She really had. 

For all the good it had done her. 

The first few weeks he was with her she had tried to ignore his physical attractiveness, concentrating instead on his education and on the soul within the package. But in less than a month, and with increasing regularity thereafter, he began to replace Rod in her dreams. Sometimes those dreams would seem so vividly real she'd awaken with a start, drenched in sweat and all tangled up in her sheets, acutely aware of the song playing along every axon and neural pathway in her body. Then she'd lay there in her bed, trying to catch her breath, trying to calm, listening to the whirr of the chair casters from the other room and the slight squeak of one of the wheels, knowing it would be near impossible to meet his eyes over the breakfast table. 

It wasn't that she'd never had X-rated dreams before, but some of them were so intensely vibrant that they both worried and frightened her.

Every male she'd ever been attracted to in her life had at least been _allegedly_ Human (although she had to admit to having strong doubts about some of them). Thus, the near overpowering attraction she felt for him had been enormously unsettling and very unnerving, rather like finding oneself harboring an unexpected and entirely inappropriate lust for a Saint Bernard. 

Sure, Cole had _looked_ completely Human on the outside. Hell, he was _drop-dead-take-me-I'm-yours gorgeous!_ And she certainly wasn't _blind_ to that fact. 

__

But heaven only knows what kinds of organs he's got on the INSIDE, a whispered voice in her mind had often reminded her, always sounding more than a bit snarky about it, even to Mel. 

And early on she knew that his appearance was nothing more than an illusion, that _he_ was nothing more than an illusion. He was an alien from outer space, for God's sake, no more Human than a shaved gorilla all dressed up in Armani would be! She was also very well aware that the exact Human image he'd ended up with had only come about as a matter of chance. If he'd seen a billboard ad for a theater revival of the _Hunchback of_ _Notre Dame_ instead of that one for Cole-brand Briefs, he would've fashioned himself in the image of Quasimodo. 

All she had initially known about his true appearance was that he was a being of light and energy and that "all six lifeforms in Migar have visual organs," presumably including Cirronians. Hell! A creature having eight tentacles, four eyes, a forked tongue, warty skin and a curly piglet tail could very well fit that description!

Eventually, he'd further explained with something she still found totally incomprehensible, something about plasmatic ions and photons and electrical and magnetic particles and positive and negative polarities. Physics had never been her strong suit and her imagination wasn't up to envisioning anything beyond a cartoon light bulb with stick-figure arms and legs.

But with his eyes. Always with his utterly amazing eyes.

Yet if he hadn't looked so very perfect, so very Human, then maybe she wouldn't have felt the need to latch on to a fully-functional relationship with a _real_ Human male as a defensive buffer. 

Poor Vic. So eager for the two of them to resume their relationship, pulling out all the stops to court her again, he'd just been ... handy. 

__

God! How could she have ever done such a thing? 

It was so easy for her to recognize what had happened in hindsight, to see why and how all her previous reservations had so quickly fallen by the wayside. Where before it had been completely unacceptable that Vic was so married to his job he didn't really have time for anyone or anything else, it then became okay that they only saw each other a few times a month, just as long as she had a bonafide relationship going to help keep her growing attraction for Cole safely at bay. 

She genuinely cared for Vic and she'd never meant to use him like that. 

It had just ended up working out that way. 

What an idiot she'd been. Given the circumstances, how could they have ever worked out otherwise? At the very least, a good relationship absolutely must have openness and honesty going for it. And theirs just didn't. It couldn't. From the start she'd found herself having to conceal a very important part of her life from him and regularly making up excuses and telling him stories on top of lies. 

All along, she'd only been fooling herself. And as a result, fooling him. 

Vic was such a nice, sweet, gentle, caring and compassionate man who offered her love, security, stability, a family, a real future ... But while her head told her that he was the kind of man she'd always wanted, the truth is, something vital was missing between them, had _always_ been missing between them. 

And as fond as she was of him, he had always been a poor second in her heart after Rod. 

Just as Rod had become second to...

She squeezed her eyes shut again, biting her lower lip nearly hard enough to break the skin and draw blood while the tidal wave of loss crashed over her again, using the self-inflicted pain to brace herself against once more succumbing to the power of the undertow.

__

Dammit! She was NOT going to cry over him anymore! 

For all she knew, this had nothing to do with Cole as an individual. Breeders always aim to optimize certain behaviors, traits and qualities in their stock. Maybe she'd been deliberately wired to respond this way with _any_ male Cirronian and didn't really have a choice in the matter 

A flash of raw, unfocused rage stopped her tears as nothing else possibly could. 

Whatever they had done to make her this way, she was still a Human being, far more so than anything else, and she was _NOT_ an animal. She had to keep believing that. And she absolutely and uncategorically _refused_ to be treated as if she were a breeding cow! If nothing else, she _did_ have a choice on whether she ever allowed herself to be _controlled _by such a response!

"Want some more coffee, hon?"

Mel looked up, grateful for the distraction from the increasingly dark and painful web of tangled thoughts weaving through her mind. "No. No, thanks ... Margo." She cleared her throat, dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose in a paper napkin, trying to find her voice. "I think my ... my kidneys would be staging an open rebellion." 

Margo chuckled at that while Mel checked her watch. 

It was nearly nine. She'd been hanging out in this place long enough. 

She dug in her purse, put four dollars and twenty-seven cents on the table to cover the tab for her nearly untouched breakfast, then handed the surprised waitress a fifty, firmly closing her hand around it as she began to protest and tried to hand it back. 

"I want you to keep it," she insisted. "Now, if you or someone else would be kind enough to give me directions to Chicago, I'd..." 

__

"Chicago!?!" Margo emphatically shook her head in negation as she not-too-grudgingly pocketed her windfall. "Listen, hon. It ain't any of my business but, if I was you, I'd stay well far away from there, far away from any big city."

"Why?"

Margo snorted in disbelief. "You mean you ain't _heard!?_"

"Heard what?"

"Hell, hon, it's all over the news and everybody's talking about it! Yesterday, somethin' like fifty or sixty people just keeled over and dropped dead in Chicago alone! All at the same time, it appears. At least another fifty or sixty elsewheres. Probably more. Even north through Canada and south through Mexico and Central America, they say. Heard it happened in England and Europe, too."

"I think I ... I might've ... heard something about that," Mel stammered, realizing what the woman had to be referring to. 

Cole never had been too bothered with leaving most of the Human host bodies wherever they happened to fall, she ruefully noted. Likely, he thought he wouldn't be around long enough to have to deal with the all the messy aftermath. And with that remote Collection he'd done... Still, he'd been steadily wracking up the body count and there would've ended up being a stack of them all told even if he'd continued hunting down the fugitives one at a time.

"Yeah, well, it ain't over with. They's still findin' more bodies and lots of people are scared shitless – pardon my French – and gettin' themselves out. Anyways, now they's saying the C.D.C.'s gonna be investigating. Maybe the government and the military, too. Talk is, it might be some sorta weird plague or a terrorist attack or somethin' going on. Maybe even an alien invasion. Can't be too careful these days, ya know."


	5. Chapter 5

****

Chapter 5

Outside the Good Eats cafe, Mel turned her face to the rays of the morning sun, appreciating its wane new warmth tingling on her skin. With temperatures already inching above the freezing mark, the day promised to be a relatively mild one. The mountains of plowed snow were starting to mutate at their edges into slush and puddles, indicating that the icy grip of winter was beginning to loosen as the seasons inexorably cycled through their change. Winter had a few nasty last gasps left in it, she was sure (it always did), but spring was undeniably on its way.

__

Where to now? 

Home, she supposed. Somehow she would have to find a way to deal with everything, a way to manage, a way to cope.

Somehow. 

Running from herself simply wasn't possible. 

And it was pointless masochism to mourn for what could never have been anyway. 

The trick would be in forcing herself to keep busy, forcing herself to stay focused on other things.

__

"Piece of cake."  
"No, thank you."

She'd go home, try to get a decent night's sleep, then worry about destroying all of Cole's electronic and computer stuff and distributing it in bits and pieces in dumpsters and trash bins all over the City. Then she'd see a realtor, arrange to have a garage sale, make appointments with her lawyer, her banker, her broker, her financial advisor... 

It all seemed so hopelessly overwhelming, hardly worth the effort it would take.

She'd have to get herself organized as never before, decide what to do with her life and where she wanted to go, make lists...

Then, of course, there was still Vic and his broken heart (and her guilt over _that!_) and his endless probing investigative questions to contend with. 

Great. Was there any reason why she shouldn't just put a gun to her head right now? Outside of not even owning a gun, that is?

And ... _Oh, God._ Jess and Ewan were flying in for their promised visit at the end of the week. With everything else, it had completely slipped her mind. 

__

Double damn! She dearly wanted to see Jess again, but the timing here was so incredibly lousy and she simply wasn't up for it. Truth be told, all she really wanted to do was put herself to bed in a drunken coma and pull the blankets up over her head for at least a solid month. 

Preferably longer. 

Maybe she'd just call and postpone, make up some sort of excuse... 

No. Jess' taste in men not withstanding, she was a bright gal and would likely see right through any dumb excuse she could come up with. She usually did. And she was still smugly razzing her about there only being a single bed in the hotel room she and Cole had shared in London. 

And the two of them had postponed coming twice _already..._

But how was she supposed to explain the condition of the Watchfire? What should she say when they asked where Cole was and what happened? How...

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep but unsteady breath, then slowly exhaled, seeking to find a measure of increasingly elusive calm.

Baby steps, she told herself. Itty-bitty baby steps. Only one thing at a time and first things first.

She had a long and tedious drive ahead of her to get back to Chicago – probably at least nine or ten hours – and it was best she get started. With any luck, if she left now she could be home by six or seven. With even greater luck, she just might be able to come to a few decisions along the way, figure out exactly how to handle Vic and what she should do about the upcoming British invasion. 

But she'd never considered herself to be particularly lucky. 

Boisterous activity in the window of the Dinosaur Feathers pet shop next door caught Mel's attention as her thoughts uneasily settled and she gave a last glance around, but reflections off of the glass made it impossible for her to tell what was doing it from her angle. 

After a brief moment's hesitation, curiosity won out and she walked over to take a look.

__

Aww! She should've known. Puppies! 

Immediately the fur balls forgot their doggie wrestling matches and came bounding over to the glass to greet her, tails wagging their chubby little rumps so hard that they kept loosing their balance and falling over. Clambering over each other, the five of them vied for which could slobber the store's plate glass the most with shiny wet noses and eagerly slurping pink tongues.

The hand-lettered sign taped to the inside of the window read:

**__**

Just In! THE ONLY LOVE YOU CAN BUY!  
Adorable, Locally-Bred  
SCHNOODLE PUPPIES  
(Miniature Schnauzer x Miniature Poodle breed cross)  
Health Absolutely and Unconditionally Guaranteed!  
We NEVER do business with puppy mills!

And heart-melting adorable they certainly were. She could get herself the love, loyalty and companionship of a cute little pooch, have an always sympathetic, non-judgmental ear to share her confidences with and unburden her fears and sorrows to; have a warm, furry body to share her bed and hug and snuggle with through the endless empty, lonely nights that stretched out ahead. 

__

"Do you have dogs where you come from?"

She didn't have to be alone. She could obtain true, unconditional love on a leash.

__

"Yes. Something very similar. They don't have fur, and they don't have legs or teeth, but they do sound very much the same."

It was such an achingly tempting idea, especially with that appealing little apricot-colored one with the pink collar and the soulful shoe-button eyes, but... 

__

What the hell was she thinking? 

It was a _bad_ idea. A _very_ bad idea. 

Dogs must be housebroken and taken for walks several times a day without fail, rain or shine. They have to be trained and regularly groomed and brought to the vet for shots and worming and fixing'. They bark and they drool and they piddle on the carpets and, if given half a chance, they raid the garbage can and drink out of the toilet bowl. They eat your best shoes and they chase after cars and they bite the mailman. 

Everything about her life was a totaled wreck right now – and _she_ was the totaled wreckage helplessly marooned at the center of it – with far too many messes, loose ends, unanswered (unanswerable?) questions, plus a numbing host of multiplying fears and problems she was still shying away from fully looking in the eye. And she simply couldn't handle yet another set of problems or even attempt to manage the responsibility for anyone or anything other than herself. Not even a puppy. 

She sighed. There's always a price for love, but this was one she thankfully didn't have to pay. This was one love she could bring herself to just walk away from without remorse or regret. 

She looked into those soulful shoe-button eyes. 

Well, maybe with only a little. 

The puppies seemed to sense that she'd made her decision and one by one gave up on trying to charm her, the apricot-colored one the last to reluctantly do so, finally resuming their doggie wrestling matches. 

Time to start heading home, she mumbled to herself as she turned away. Then she stopped, turning back to look beyond the playful puppies into the store itself. 

The slender silhouette of a lone figure could be seen moving about. 

The young woman from the cafe's take out counter. 


	6. Chapter 6

****

Chapter 6

Mel found herself impulsively entering the pet shop, telling herself it was only for a few moments, the tinkle of the bell above the door announcing her arrival. 

The young woman turned from feeding the guinea pigs their daily helping of kibbles and fresh veggies with a pleasantly warm and invitingly friendly smile. 

"Good morning, ma'am. May I help you?" 

Mel felt a stab of disappointment, followed by one of confusion. There was nothing at all familiar about this young woman's voice. But she'd been so sure that she knew her. In fact, she was _still_ sure, in some odd way even more so than before. 

But from where? 

The only girls her age she knew were the younger sisters of a few friends and the daughters of some of the Watchfire's older regulars. And who did she know in Minnesota, anyway?

"Or did you just stop by to commune with some of your fellow Earthlings?"

"I - I guess I did," Mel stuttered, suddenly self-conscious. Whatever was engendering this feeling of familiarity, this young woman apparently didn't share it.

__

"Excuse me ... Do I know you?"

Mel ground her molars. _Puh-leeze!_ Why couldn't the voices in her head just _shut the hell up!?!_

"That's perfectly okay," the young woman was saying as she secured the gratings over the guinea pig pens and moved on to the rabbits. "You'd be surprised at how many people do. Enjoy. Tropical fish and koi in the back. Puppies and kittens to your right. Fancy goldfish in the tanks by the register. Rabbits and small mammals over here, as you can plainly see. Birds in their own room, blue door on your left beyond the counter. Lots of birds, all locally bred. They're our specialty. Just follow all the noise."

"Sounds like you carry a pretty complete collection," Mel offered. 

"Well, we don't stock reptiles, amphibians, tarantulas, saltwater fish, monkeys, ferrets or other exotics..." she explained, making certain each rabbit was happily munching its allotted carrots and salad greens before securing their hutches. "Just the usual. Anyway, if you need me or have any questions, I'll be in the bird room." She teasingly smiled, as though imparting a secret. "Got some baby feathered dinosaurs to hand-feed."

"Feathered dinosaurs? That's a joke, right?"

"Actually, no," she told her with obvious amusement. "Not all lines of dinosaurs went the way of extinction. Some of them continued to evolve and became birds. Then those birds became more birds."

"Oh. Right." Now Mel was feeling foolish. "_The Discovery Channel._ And the name of the store."

"Yeah." She smiled again. "They're not wrong about that, you know." She picked up her hamper-like basket. "Excuse me. Appetites are awaiting." 

Mel watched her retreating back until she disappeared in the cacophony of twittering, chirping, tweeting, squawking birdy noises coming from the other room. 

She really ought to get going, Mel told herself. 

Still, she couldn't quite bring herself to leave just yet. 

Feeling very much at loose ends, she surveyed the layout of the store and its merchandise from where she stood, uncertain of what was holding her there or exactly what she was looking for. It was a pet store, a typical pet store with typical pet store stuff. Nothing more. Had she been expecting something else? 

Her wandering gaze was finally drawn to a stack of books piled high on the front counter. 

__

"Melville, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Shakespeare, Faulkner and Twain."

Of course. A college kid with a part-time job would be doing her studying after chores and during lulls in walk-in business.

But those books weren't any of the classics. 

__

"Green Eggs and Ham." 

Some were weighty medical textbooks with long and mostly unpronounceable titles, but the majority had to do with genetics. _Genome: The Blueprint of a Species. Sequence and Genome Analysis. Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation. Human Telomere Mapping and Sequencing. Biomedical Engineering. Genetics and Molecular Medicine. _

Hardly light reading. 

Apparently, the young woman was studying to become a doctor or a medical researcher or some such thing. While Mel found that to be an interesting tidbit of information, it didn't bring her any closer to knowing who this woman was or where she knew her from. 

And she _did_ know her. She _knew_ that she did. Despite not having a single solitary shred of evidence to support that belief, despite the young woman not seeming to know _her_ in return, Mel was all but positive about it. To not be able to place her was so annoyingly frustrating.

And right now her tolerance for frustration was at an all-time low.

Mel idly strolled over to the bird room door to curiously peer in through the glass panel inset. 

It was a bird room okay, housing at least several hundred brightly-feathered birds. On one side were two aisles of small to large cages on racks or stands or hanging from hooks in the ceiling, each occupied by anywhere from one or two birds to small flocks of them. On the other side were the larger parrots, macaws and cockatoos in rows of bigger cages or set out on freestanding perches. 

The mysterious young woman was seated on a stool at a central table with two aquarium tanks adapted for use as nurseries for pin-feathered baby birds. She was tying a napkin-bib around the neck of a vigorously squalling little guy who was eager for his meal to begin.

The noise abated for a few moments as Mel opened the door and entered, but soon picked up again where it had left off. A bright red macaw wolf-whistled at her; a big white cockatoo raised its sulfur-yellow crest and greeted her with a raucous Hello!' and an ear-splitting screech. Snatches of various bird songs could be heard rising above and weaving through the general decibel level.

__

"It was very loud."

The young woman looked up and smiled as Mel closed the door behind her.

"Sooner or later, everyone seems to end up coming in here," she commented.

"It's warm in here." 

"Yeah, it is. Most of these guys are tropicals, so we keep the temperature a bit higher."

She scooped out a measure of oatmeal-like pabulum from a small jar with an infant-sized spoon. Howling at the top of its lungs, the sound remarkably like that of cranked-up static, the little bird greedily attacked the spoon as soon as it was offered. As the pabulum dribbled and splattered under the hungry assault, the reason for the bib became clear.

"What kind of bird is that?" Mel asked after a moment, not knowing what else to say. "It looks like a pincushion with too much rouge on its cheeks."

"Cockatiel," she absently replied as she held the bird still to gently wipe the mess of its first helping off of its face with a damp paper towel. "He should be almost fully feathered out in a week or so. Then he'll look much more like a bird."

Mel checked out the nursery tanks, each home to eight or nine little cockatiels, all loudly letting it be known in no uncertain terms that it should be the next one fed. 

"They do look sort of ... reptilian."

"Yeah," she cheerfully agreed. "They kind of show off their ancestry at this age."

As Mel watched, the baby cockatiel latched on to a second offered spoonful with every bit as much ravenous enthusiasm – and every bit as much noise – as it had the first.

Why was she bothering this young woman? She was obviously very busy, still had about dozen and a half hungry babies to attend to and probably chores after that. And she herself had a long drive ahead of her.

Still oddly reluctant to leave, Mel moved off down the first aisle, reading the neatly handwritten legends on index cards taped or clipped to the cages on either side of her, the results of carefully managed breeding. 

Zebra finches - _Mutations in Stock: Normal Grays and Fawns, Florida Fancies, CFWs, Whites, Penguins, Orangebreasts, Blackbreasts, Pieds, Blackfaces, Phaeos, Combos and MORE. Just ask!. _

Society finches - _Normals and Grays in Brown, Chestnut and Fawn Selfs, Clearwings and Pieds. _

Owl, strawberry and melba finches. 

Indian silverbills. 

Colorbred canaries - _Whites, Red and Yellow Lipochromes, Red and Yellow Mosaics..._

Her grandmother had kept a series of pet canaries over the years, Mel reflected, but it was impossible for her to say for certain just how many because they all blurred together in her mind. They'd all been yellow in color, just like those yellow lipochromes. And they'd all been unimaginatively named Tweety' – in honor, she supposed, of her grandmother's all-time favorite cartoon character. If she'd had a cat, she doubtless would have named him Sylvester'. But she'd been allergic to cats. 

Several cages of parakeets – called budgies' on the index cards – in white, yellow and numerous shades of blue, green, violet and gray in various color mutations designated as Cinnamon, Graywing, Clearwing, Fallow, Opaline and Spangle. 

Gloster corona canaries with jaunty mop-like crests. 

Border canaries, tiny Fife canaries and chubby Norwich canaries, all in a range of colors. 

Little wild-type' and brilliant' diamond doves. 

Java finches - _Normals, Whites and Cinnamons. Ask about Pieds and the NEW Silvers. _

Two species of parrotlets. 

Four species of squabbling lovebirds, each again in many color varieties...

Mel rounded the end of the first aisle and slowly made her way down the second back to where she'd started from, still reading the index cards. 

Cordon-bleus, crimson-wings and several types of waxbills, firetails and firefinches. 

A dazzling rainbow of different-colored Gouldian finches. 

Another cage of canaries, these called American Singers.

At least nine different species of birds in as many cages, labeled as this or that munia or mannikin. 

Sleekly feathered-out cockatiels – _Lutino, White, Whiteface, Yellowface, Pearl, Pied, Fallow, Cinnamon and Combinations. _

Still more cages of colorbred canaries in all manner of colors – _Black, Brown, Agate and Isabel Series in Classic and the New Colors of Opal, Satinette, Pastel, Pastel Graywing, Ino and Eumo._

At the end of the second aisle back by the feeding table Mel stopped at one of the smaller cages, this one housing a single bird with a bright orange face. 

__

"Male AS Canary Mule: Serinus canaria x Carduelis c. carduelis."

The young woman looked over at her from mopping clean another bird face. "I'm sorry. Did you just say something?"

"I ... um ... no," Mel stammered, oddly chagrined that she'd spoken aloud. "No. It's just that I ... I'd always thought a mule had hooves, four legs and long ears."

The young woman looked puzzled a moment, then she laughed, a throaty, musical sound. "Oh! No, he obviously isn't _that_ kind of mule. That bird is from my aunt's breeding. He's a hybrid between a canary – the American Singer breed, to be exact – and a European goldfinch. Canary hybrids are called mules' to distinguished them from all other songbird hybrids."

"Hybrids?" Mel looked closer at the bird as it energetically hopped from perch to perch. Face to face with another deliberately created biological freak, a chill settled on the nape of her neck and her skin began to prickle as if it was crawling with hairy-legged bugs. "You mean as in ... between two different species?"

"Yeah," she said, returning her latest hand-fed to its nursery and taking out another. "It's a rather popular avicultural practice, really. It has a history going at least as far back as the days of the Roman Empire. It's been done with canaries for about 500 years now." 

"But ... why would anybody want to do such a thing?"

"Oh, as a way to obtain an exotic plumage or a new color or a different type of blended song... Or as a study in genetics or taxonomy ... But mostly for the sheer challenge of it, I guess."

"Yeah, well, _sure,_ that makes a whole lot of sense! ... Breed penguins with parrots, owls with eagles, create all sorts of..." Mel stopped herself, immediately regretting allowing the beginnings of the tirade to slip out. Her tone sounded so damn angry and snide.

"I'm afraid not!" the young woman laughed, apparently too involved with keeping the latest baby cockatiel from swallowing the entire feeding spoon to notice. "Crosses like that would be impossible."

Mel managed to compose herself and speak in a more conversational tone. 

"And why should you think that?"

"Oh, it's not a matter of my opinion," she told her as she restrained the little bird from climbing into the food jar while measuring out another spoonful. "It is what is. Hybridization between different species can only be successfully accomplished if they're recently evolved and quite closely related, descended from the same or related stock. And often only under controlled conditions. Recently evolved species are still in a period of transition, still in a spurt of becoming, so to speak. Their genomes are relatively plastic at that stage."

A creepy sensation stuttered down Mel's spine, vibrating from vertebra to vertebra. She already knew, courtesy of the same _Discovery Channel_ that had taught her about feathered dinosaurs, that modern Humans were a recently evolved species. 

But Cole had once told her that Cirronians were an ancient, space-faring race long before the ancestors of Earth's dinosaurs had even evolved.

As for the rest...

__

"Okay... I really don't want to know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway..."

"Do they ... really ... have to be ... closely related?"

The young woman gave her a curious glance as she finished cleaning off the little bird's dribbles.

"You're interested in hybrids?"

"Let's just say that, um ... I've ... had ... cause to become interested."

"Oh? Do you have any experience in keeping or breeding birds?"

Mel hesitated. She had none at all. The only real contact she'd ever had with her grandmother's canaries was to sometimes clip a piece of fruit or vegetable to the cage bars for them to peck at. And while she didn't have any interest in avian hybrids, she realized that she just might find a few answers here. This young woman seemed to be quite knowledgeable on the subject and there would be no way she could simply bluff her way through.

"I ask because breeding hybrids definitely isn't something for beginners," she clarified. "They're quite a challenge for even the most experienced of aviculturalists."

"Any particular reason why?" Mel asked, side-stepping the initial question. 

Cole would be proud of her, she thought. Without lying, she'd misdirected the inquiry just as easily and skillfully as he ever did. 

"The most basic one of all: convincing two different species to pair up isn't an easy thing to accomplish. In the natural order of things, hybrids only occur in unnatural situations or under artificial conditions, such as in very isolated populations where there's no mate of the appropriate species available ... Or in captivity when a breeder doesn't allow a choice. In all species, there are innate and inbred psychological, physiological and behavioral barriers working against out-crossing, an encoding that way, if you will. Each seeks out its own." 

"I ... I guess I never really thought about it..." Mel lied with a crawling sense of unease. 

The statement just _felt_ completely right and she recognized the truth of it. It echoed the litany she had repeatedly told herself for so many months, the litany that one kiss had rendered moot: Bluebirds don't make it with turtles. Turtles don't make it with lizards. Lizards don't make it with fish. Fish don't make it with frogs. Frogs don't make it with deer. Deer don't make it with horses. Horses don't make it with cows. Cows don't make it with gorillas. Gorillas don't make it with Humans. _And the beloved Human/alien connection of sci-fi be damned, Humans DON'T make it with aliens – no matter WHAT they've made themselves out to look like!_

The young woman just smiled at her answer. "Well, why should you? It's as natural a part of life as breathing... No living thing ever has to consciously decide which species to court. Not even people. It's in the blood..." 

__

"Yes, it was in your blood."

"... I mean, you ever hear of a hybrid between, say, a horse and a goat?"

__

Or between a Human and anything ELSE outside of the many chimeras of mythology? 

"Guess not," Mel conceded, trying to ignore the reawakened yammerings of the voices in her head. "No more than I've ever heard of one between a ... a cat and a dog." 

__

How about in your own mirror? 

"And you never will," the young woman flatly stated, "Except maybe in some mad scientist's test tube..."

__

Test tube? 

"... Even when those innate barriers break down, the vast majority of interspecies couplings don't result in offspring simply because they can't," she was saying as she concentrated on another feeding. "And it's one thing for two related animals like a horse and an ass to get it on, quite another for a horse and a goat."

__

Could the Cirronians have done an alien abduction' type thing? Could they have been cold-blooded and impersonal enough to perform sexual and reproductive experiments on Humans like the stories so regularly told in lurid detail in the supermarket tabloids? 

The implanted viper of a thought was coiling in Mel's skull, slithering through her mind, its poisoned fangs sinking deep into her brain. She spoke quickly, before the young woman had quite finished her sentence, trying to mentally squirm away from the horror of the venom. 

"But ... but why call a canary hybrid a mule'?"

"As in the old saying, sterile as a mule,' that's why. You _do_ know that mules are just about the poster beast for sterility, don't you? They're a cross between two equines, an ass stallion and a horse mare. The offspring of all the equine species crosses – zebras, asses and horses – are sterile, just as the vast majority of all interspecies hybrids, regardless of the species involved, are sterile..."

__

"... mad scientist's test tube..." 

Mel closed her eyes, desperately trying to push the thought away. _It couldn't be. She had a father. And a mother. It ... just ... couldn't ... be... _

"... For instance, a chicken is a type of domesticated pheasant, developed from the red jungle fowl, to be exact. Cross, say, a ring-neck pheasant – or any other pheasant, for that matter – with a chicken and you get what's called a phicken'. It's almost always sterile..."

__

... But what if they WEREN'T really her mother and father? Wouldn't that explain a lot?

"... Turkeys are also in the pheasant family, but not closely enough related to chickens to produce viable young. Their chromosome counts are different. Cross a chicken with a turkey and the embryo dies while it's... 

"Ma'am? Are you all right? You look a little..."

__

NO! That was impossible! She looked just like her mother. And she was as tall as her grandmother, getting her height from her father's side of the family. It was impossible! Impossible!

"I ... I'm fine..." Mel tried, but she couldn't force even a faint smile. She pushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, surprised to find that her hand was shaking as if palsied. Her blood felt as if it were congealing in her veins, leaving her light-headed. "Just a ... headache... You were saying something ... about ... hybrid ... fertility?"

__

"One minute I'm a ... perfectly normal female Homo sapiens and the next minute I'm..."

It was a long few moments before the young woman spoke again. Mel stared at the canary mule and waited, feeling as if she were being studied, evaluated.

__

"... Now I don't even know what I am!"

"Oh, I could probably cite hundreds of examples," the young woman finally went on, slower and not as breezy as before. "But I don't want to bore you. It's enough to say that in the uncommon instances where there's any fertility at all, in birds it's usually only the male that is..."

__

"You're part Cirronian."

But _WHAT_ part? And from _WHOM?_ And _HOW?_

"... With mammals it's just the opposite, usually fertile females and mostly sterile males. Rarely are both sexes equally fertile in any given hybrid cross, even among the very closest of relations. There are a few rare exceptions, to be sure, but that's been found to be the rule."

__

"Is that ... physically ... possible!?" 

Cirronians and Humans were not only different species evolved separate and apart on different worlds, as Mel thought she understood it, they were two completely different forms of life... 

__

"I'm an energy-based being." 

... And comparing them would be something on the order of comparing plants with animals. 

__

"... your Human physiology is so primitive..." 

The lights seemed to be getting brighter, the sounds of the birds louder, the disembodied babble of voices in her head more strident, as the floor began to tilt and wobble beneath her feet. Mel felt an arctic chill radiating from deep within that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature of the room. Her heart was sledging so fast and hard against her ribs that the inner percussion all but deafened her. 

__

"... you created your image from the billboard."

"But I don't understand," she choked out. "Why should ... How could that be?" 

Her voice was drawing out, echoing strangely in her ears, not even sounding like her own.

__

"... we traveled to a distant galaxy to create bloodlines..."

"You're Cirronian."

"And the two species must have..."

"I'm ... part ..."

"... scientist's test tube..." 

"Mated."

"It's complicated, but... Listen, are you sure you're okay? You really don't look well." 

Now the young woman's voice was sounding distantly hollow, low and distorted, like an old, scratchy recording playing at the wrong speed, becoming drowned out beneath the crowded echoings of the other voices.

__

"It was in your blood."

"It would seem so..."

"... so primitive..." 

"... part ... Cirronian."

"I don't even know what I am!""

"I ... Yes. Please. I really ... need ... want ... to..." 

In slow motion the young woman was rising from her seat and moving toward her, her features etched with alarm, her lips moving without sound as the floor lurched drunkenly beneath her feet, then abruptly climbed the walls. 

__

"It was always part of you."

Then the room went completely white.


	7. Chapter 7

****

Chapter 7

Something cool and damp was being pressed to her forehead. 

Mel opened her eyes to find herself flat on her back and looking into a wide pair of anxious baby blues. The young woman's face came into focus above her, the anxiety dissolving into a soft smile. 

"Welcome back."

"Wha ... What just happened?"

"You fainted. Luckily, I managed to catch you before you hit the floor and cracked your skull. Just relax. You've..."

__

"Fainted!?" Mel yelped in indignation, beginning to hitch herself up onto her elbows. "I've never fainted before in my..."

"Then it's a first, isn't it?" A hand, gentle yet surprisingly firm on her shoulder, restrained her from sitting up, insisted with steady pressure that she lay back down. "Just give yourself a couple of minutes. Your color's starting to look better already."

"How long was I..."

"Well less than a minute. Maybe all of thirty or forty seconds. Just try to relax." She smiled again, patted her shoulder and nodded encouragingly. "Stay still and I'll be right back. I'm going to get something for you to drink."

Brushing birdseed and stray down feathers off of her jeans, she got to her feet and hurried out of the room.

Mel lay still for a count of three, then promptly sat up, immediately wishing she hadn't. Woozy, she had to brace herself with both arms while the vertigo took its time subsiding and the floor gradually stopped rolling. 

"You don't follow orders or listen to advice very well, do you?" the young woman wryly noted when she returned a few moments later. Depositing a paper bag on the table, she came over to Mel and crouched down beside her, handing her a small paper cup. "Here. Drink this."

Mel uncertainly eyed the clear liquid. 

"What is it?"

"Sugared water. Best I can do on short notice. The carbs will give you a quick energy boost."

Mel cautiously tried a sip. Finding it as advertised, she drained the cup in one long gulp.

"When did you last eat?"

"I just had..." Mel began, then stopped. She'd been about to say that she just had breakfast, but that wasn't true. She hadn't swallowed enough food to satisfy a hamster. When _did_ she last eat, anyway? Yesterday? The day before? Two days before? Three? Unable to remember, she just shook her head. 

"There _is _such a thing as taking a diet too far, you know," the young woman strongly admonished. "A body needs a regular supply of energy!" 

"I'm _not_ on a diet!" Mel snapped, becoming irritated at the younger woman's pseudo-maturity. What could she possibly know? She was just a kid! 

If the young woman took any umbrage at her tone, she didn't indicate it. She fixed her in her laser-blue sites and gazed at her steadily for a long searching moment, then the furrow between her brows cleared. 

"Is there someone you'd like me to call?" she quietly asked. 

The scalding hot tears that had been threatening to flow all morning sprang unbidden to her eyes, as if they'd only been eagerly waiting for another cue. Mel hung her head and turned her face away, trying to hide them from the younger woman's sight, struggling to hold them back. 

There was no one. 

And there would never be anyone ever again. 

Ever.

A soul-deep desolation, an oppressive, overpowering sense of utter isolation enveloped her, an emotional bleakness as blasted and complete as a final holocaust. She was all alone in the world, cut adrift and more completely alone and afraid than she'd ever been before in her life, a yawning chasm of difference forever segregating her from the rest of Humanity, severing her from life itself. 

"Stop fighting it," the young woman murmured. "You can't. Just let it take you."

Soothing fingers smoothed her hair back as she began to tremble, then to quake, her tears running hotter and faster, defying her every pathetic attempt at control.

"You don't understand..." Mel whimpered, helpless and utterly mortified, unable to stop herself.

"Maybe not the why... But I very well know grief. And fear." A comforting arm slipped around her shoulders, offering her safe refuge. "Let it go."

"You couldn't ... There's n-n-no ... w-w-way ... y-y-you..." 

Broken, keening sobs tore from her throat, her words losing all coherencies as the young woman turned her and drew her into the sheltering embrace of her arms.

"_Shhh._ I know. Believe me. I know..."

****

**** *** **** *** ****

A turkey breast and Swiss on whole wheat with lettuce, tomato and Dijon mustard. 

A Granny Smith apple. 

A ripe banana. 

A homemade pecan brownie drizzled with fudge icing. 

A cup of Dannon blueberry yogurt. 

"Your choice. Any or all." The young woman gestured to the food she'd just taken out of the paper bag and set out on the bird room's table in front of her. "Help yourself."

"I can't ... I _won't_ take your lunch..." Mel uncomfortably demurred, her ears still hotly burning with the embarrassment of so badly losing it.

"Don't be silly. There's a cafe next door. I won't starve. Now! _Eat_ something!"

"Are you always this bossy?" Mel grumbled, unable to argue with her logic.

"Yeah!" 

She sat down on another stool opposite the one from Mel and returned to her interrupted hand feeding of the baby cockatiels as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. 

Mel picked at a hangnail and warily regarded her benefactor from under her lashes. 

"You ... You're not going to even ask what that was all about?"

"No, I'm not. If you want to tell me, you will. If not..." She shrugged. "It's okay."

Relieved at not being expected to explain herself, Mel mutely nodded her thanks. 

She felt drained, scoured agonizingly raw through and through and all but hollowed out, but somehow a little better, a little stronger, not quite as fragile as before. 

Until the next round hit her. 

Although she had no doubt at all that there would be many next rounds to come, at least the gibbering voices had finally fallen blissfully silent. Whether or not they'd remain that way was another matter, but for now her head was wholly her own.

It was weird, she reflected. The two of them didn't know a thing about each other, not even their respective names (and it certainly seemed much too awkward for her to ask now!), but she'd spent nearly fifteen minutes sobbing into the other woman's shoulder in what amounted to an oddly mother-and-child experience. 

Odd because she had become the child. And this young woman, this teenaged stranger, had so naturally and easily stepped into the role of surrogate mother. With a bedside manner like that, Mel thought, this kid was going to make for a wonderful physician.

The young woman looked up from her task as Mel's stomach loudly rumbled and gurgled, adding yet another unwelcome layer to her embarrassment.

"You know, sometimes when a bird or animal is sick or gravely wounded, it refuses to eat. Then it has to be force-fed so it can have the strength to heal. I've never had to force-feed a Human before _but_..."

"Yes, _mommy,_" Mel growled, feeling perversely petulant as she snatched up the brownie and took a small bite. "Happy now?"

"Ecstatic."

She smiled at her and Mel found herself managing a slight, if rather lopsided, smile in return. 

Mel also found that she was actually tasting the brownie, the first food to even _have_ a taste in weeks. She swallowed and took another bite. And then another. And then one after another, little realizing that she was wolfing it down.

"I really... I want to thank you for, um..." she awkwardly began as she finished the brownie and licked the icing from her fingers, uncertain of what she wanted to say, much less how to say it.

The young woman didn't even look over. "_Mmm..._ You could do with some protein and fiber as well. Probably potassium, too. Eat the sandwich and the banana. The yogurt couldn't hurt, either."

Mel eyed the food. The thick sandwich looked to be far more than her too-long-underfed stomach could possibly handle, and she still felt guilty over eating the woman's lunch. After a moment's hesitation she compromised by accepting the banana. 

"How did a girl your age ever get to know so much? When I was your age, I was a royally screwed up mess. Hell, I'm still a royally screwed up mess."

"Are you sure about that?" Another satisfied cockatiel was returned to its nursery and yet another took its place on the table. "Or have you only been royally messed with?"

"Both," Mel answered, making no attempt at censoring the anger and bitterness in her voice. In one way or another, she was finding that she'd been messed with' her entire life, messed with' long before she was even born. 

"You're a survivor. And a very stubborn and tenacious one at that. That much I can tell. So whatever it is, you'll find a way to pull yourself through."

"Or not."

The young woman sharply looked up. 

"Is that really an option?"

Mel found that her eyes were unnerving, almost too intelligent and missing very little, far too old and aware for such a young face. Uncomfortable under such keen scrutiny, she looked away and didn't respond. 

What was she supposed to say? 

The world and her view of it had irrevocably been altered and nothing was what she'd always thought it was. And no one was who she'd always thought they were, either. 

Not even herself. 

Especially not herself. 

And although she could well understand why this young woman would be regarding her with concern and even with a certain degree of alert wariness, she hated being the focus of anyone's solicitude. It would be difficult enough if she had to endure the honest compassion of her close friends. With strangers, it was far too easy for such sympathies to do an about face and turn into contempt and abject scorn. She bristled at the idea of being perceived of as weak or out of control or drowning in the seas of self-pity and wouldn't tolerate being patronized. 

For Melanie C. Porter, self-respect had been hard-won with considerable effort through a wretched childhood that, save for the constant love and support of her grandmother, had provided fertile ground for seeds of self-doubt and for excessive feelings of guilt and inadequacy to flourish in a weedy jungle. She refused to surrender what she had struggled so hard to attain – even if that, too, proved to be only an illusion. It was all she had left.

In uneasy silence she polished off the banana, tossed the peel in the trash, then stood. 

"Thank you for seeing me through that ... episode," she blurted out as she hurriedly shouldered her purse. "And thank you for sharing your lunch. But I ... I really have to get going."

"Sure. Whatever you say."

With a crisp nod Mel hurried from the room, unable to leave fast enough, well aware that the young woman was watching her every move. 

But she only got as far as the college textbooks stacked on the store's front counter. 

It was the top book on the stack, _Genome: The Blueprint of a Species,_ which stopped her. 

What was it had Cole told her?

__

"There's always a basis of truth to every myth and every legend." 

Had he merely been recounting a story to her, a myth or a legend, as one possible explanation?

If what that young woman said was true, then what was the likelihood of two very different species not only being able to produce progeny, but fertile progeny to establish continuing bloodlines? 

Certainly Earthly mythologies were rife with all manner of Human/animal hybrids, but that didn't make them anything more than fantasy. Was it possible for a Human and a goat to actually breed a faun? Could a Human and a horse produce a centaur? How about sphinxes and minotaurs and mermaids and all those beings, gods and demigods with the heads or bodies of animals?

Could Miss Piggy ever have a family with Kermit?

And if there was no likelihood of such things, if they weren't possible, then how exactly had the Human/Cirronian bloodlines been set up? 

Were there other methods beyond hybridization? 

She shivered through a sudden attack of intense revulsion, knowing that there surely were, knowing where that train of thought was headed. 

__

"... mad scientist's test tube..." 

Did she really want to know for certain?

One of life's oft-repeated lessons is that knowledge and understanding in and of themselves seldom bring peace of mind. For several weeks now her life had been a nerve-flaying purgatory of pain and confusion, an incomprehensible waking nightmare that didn't seem quite real, that couldn't possibly be real. But if she began to find the answers to her questions she might end up discovering that there is such a thing as hell on this side of death and her current state of ignorance would seem as a serene and comfortable refuge by comparison.

Is it better to be torn to ribbons by knowing the truth? 

Or torn to ribbons by _not_ knowing it? 

__

"Embrace it ... It's yours..." 

But what had he asked her to embrace?


	8. Chapter 8

****

Chapter 8

"Still here, I see."

Mel guiltily jumped at the sound of the approaching voice, nearly dropping the heavy textbook she was thumbing through. 

"You don't sound very surprised," she defensively snapped.

The young woman shrugged and moved behind the counter. "Chimes play in the bird room when the front door opens. I didn't hear the chimes." Leaning on the counter across from Mel, she nodded toward the textbook she was still holding. "Find what you were looking for in that? Or may I be of some help?"

"What makes you think I need any help?" Mel retorted, placing the book on top of the stack. "Let alone _your_ help!?"

Silence stretched between them, the young woman's searching gaze holding steady. 

"I'm not trying to be your enemy," she finally said.

__

A bit paranoid aren't we, Porter?

Her defiance curdling into shame, Mel looked away. 

"I... I'm sorry..." she stammered in a small voice. "I don't know what's come over me. I don't usually behave this..."

"There's no need for apology," the young woman gently assured her. "It's clear you're very frightened and confused. And in a great deal of pain. All from several sources, I would guess. So you're lashing out. It's a very normal response." 

Mel kept her eyes firmly fixed on the floor, studying the patterns made by the pebble-grained floor tiles. It would be a waste of time denying what this young woman somehow seemed to instinctively know and she just couldn't summon the energy for it.

"Can I ... ask you something?" she said after a moment.

"Of course. Please feel free to ask whatever you wish."

Mel hesitated, uncertain of how to phrase it.

"I know this is going to ... sound very dumb to you, but..." she haltingly began. "But I'm trying to understand this. A ... a genome is like that book says, a blueprint. Right? And each species _is_ a species because it has its own unique genome, its own very specific genetic code..." 

The young woman raised a startled brow at her, clearly surprised at what she was asking about, but Mel plunged on while she still had the courage. Or the stupidity. She wasn't sure which. 

"... So when two different species are bred together, their genomes never precisely align ... Like the blueprints for a Cape Cod won't exactly mesh up with those of a ... ranch or a Tudor or a split level ... Am I understanding this right?"

"Or with a stadium or an art gallery or a skyscraper, as the case may be." The young woman questioningly tilted her head, her expression now troubled. "You're ... not talking about birds, are you?" 

"It doesn't matter if I am or not," Mel tightly answered, keeping her eyes averted. She had the sudden superstitious dread that this young woman would be perceptive enough to read the truth in her soul if she obtained a good enough view. "All I want to know is why."

In silence the young woman took a seat on a stool behind the counter, then spent nearly a minute straightening the stack of books Mel had disordered. 

"All right," she finally said. "You want to know why what, exactly?"

Mel breathed a sigh of relief that the young woman was being so tolerant with her and refraining from asking any questions.

"I just want to know why it works like that," she explained. "... I mean ... I understand plumbing and wiring ... even entire rooms and things not lining up in different types of buildings but..."

"_Ah,_ I see. You want a crash course in Genetics 101, then?"

"Yeah, I guess. Something like that."

"Okay ... Let's see now..." She paused a moment, apparently considering how to simply state it. "Well, in any two given species, no matter how closely related they are, there's always at least some incompatible gene sequences in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA. Or both. Then there's the matter of conflicting loci, disparities in the order, number and placements of repetitions, differences in RNA factors, even dissimilar chromosomal and especially microchromosomal counts, not to mention..."

Bewildered, Mel held up a hand. Her perusal of the textbooks hadn't gone that far. She wasn't even certain what all those terms meant. 

"_Whoops!_ Guess I've lost you already, huh?" 

"Yeah, well ... Sort of." Mel ruefully acknowledged. Maybe she'd have a better grasp of these things if she hadn't wasted so damn much of her education cutting classes and picking up her teachers... 

Wait a minute. 

Didn't she once admit that to Cole?

"All right. I'll try to keep this very basic. In essence, all you need to know are two things. One, all these elements and more become obvious in the percentage of birth defects and in the fertility of any offspring produced. And two, the more distant the relationship between two species is, the greater these misalignments become, so the less likelihood there is of producing any offspring at all..." 

__

Yeah! She _had_ told Cole that! She'd found herself completely out of her depth as he was trying to explain a theory developed by a Cirronian scientist concerning something called the ... the Pentathonic Scale, was it? ... and how it relates to something else called a String Theory. That Cirronian scientist was...

"... As a simple example, one species might have its gene for eye color on locus 23 of chromosome 14. A different species might have only 18 gene loci on chromosome 14 and _its_ gene for eye color is found on locus 9 of chromosome 32. Things such as these serve as misalignments that..."

__

Oh ... my ... God...

Dumfounded, Mel could only gawk at the younger woman as she continued to explain. 

No wonder she had been so difficult to place. She'd seen her image on the evening news and in the newspapers several times in the past, but she'd only once before seen her in person. And that was months ago and she hadn't exactly been in close proximity to her at the time. 

"... Think of it as being rather like an infinitely complex computer program. If you know anything about computer programming, then you know that each command must be precisely written and rigidly follow within a designated format and sequence or it can corrupt part or all of..." 

She'd also altered her appearance since then. She was now wearing some makeup and her hair had been cut much shorter and styled very different, its color changed from pale blonde to light golden brown – all to probably help evade the reporters who had hounded her. 

And to incidentally make herself look a little older. 

"... Even a single minor spelling error, say a transposition of only two letters in the code, can..."

"Lontoria?"


	9. Chapter 9

****

Chapter 9

__

"NO!!!"

The stool crashed to the floor as she scrambled back and away with the panicked haste of a hot-wired cat. 

"_No!_ I'm, _ah,_ my name's –"

Mel quickly held up what she hoped was a reassuring hand, rapidly speaking over her. "– Your name's Jamie Swenson. I know. Please don't be alarmed..."

__

"Who are you?" 

"... I'm not a reporter or a ... a Vardian or anything," Mel hurriedly went on, afraid to move, seeing that the other woman was backing up and edging for the far end of the counter towards the front door, poised to bolt. "Really. My name's Mel Porter. I'm..." 

Lontoria froze in astonishment. 

"You ... You're Daggon's Human friend?" 

"Yes. I ... I was his ... friend." 

Edgy and uncertain, Lontoria nervously licked her lips and looked her up and down.

"Would it help if I showed you my driver's license?" Mel offered, trying for a little tension-defusing levity. 

"Miss Porter!" she finally gasped on a shuddering exhale of relief. "Of course! I should have recognized you from his description! It's just you gave me very a bad scare!" 

"I really didn't mean to," Mel apologized. 

"But you did anyway!" She shook her head through an uncontrollable series of short, barking chuckles, first beginning to recover her equilibrium. "For a moment there I ... I thought he may have missed a few." Still chuckling to herself she came around the counter. "But of course he wouldn't have." 

She walked right up to Mel and placed her hand on her breast, just over her heart. 

"I am deeply honored to finally be meeting you, Miss Porter," she said, formally inclining her head in a near bow. "And I want to thank you for looking out for him, for freely opening your House to him, for providing him with safe haven, for easing the loneliness of his troubled soul and giving his heart rest." 

Off-balance herself by this unexpected turn of events and now flustered as to how to respond to what was so obviously said as an honest and deeply respectful tribute, Mel's mouth opened and closed a few times in unknowing sync with the lone celestial goldfish in the small aquarium tank beside her. 

Although she'd been well aware that Cole had left Lontoria behind, it was still a shock to be meeting up with her – especially here and particularly now. She wasn't at all certain what to make of the coincidence or what think or even how she should behave. Then she unconsciously extended her own hand to return the familiar Cirronian gesture as the simple words of acknowledgement just came. 

"I ... I was ... honored to be chosen to make that choice." 

Lontoria gave a delighted laugh and nodded her approval, her hand dropping gracefully away, Mel's own hand following suit, if not quite as gracefully. 

"You know, Daggon always spoke very highly you and with a great deal of fondness," Lontoria told her as she turned to pull two stools out from beneath the counter and bade that Mel take a seat for their own private little tête-à-tête. "As able and resourceful as he is, I doubt he could've long managed on this world without your help. And mass prison break or not, without you I don't think he would've even had it in him to want to try. He'd set his course in a very different direction." 

Mel mulled that over as she made herself as comfortable with this uncomfortable situation as best she could. Intuition had told her that the two Cirronians had seen each other at least a few times since they were reunited during that horrible incident' with Zin, even though Cole had never mentioned it and she'd always respected his privacy too much to ask. Lontoria's words of "always spoke" only provided confirmation. But what she was telling her about him was nonsense. 

"You're giving me far too much credit," she politely disagreed, trying to cover her unease. "I may have, um, helped him negotiate the Human world a little quicker than ... than what might've been otherwise, but ... he never really ... needed me. He was very focused on his job, very disciplined. All but obsessed, if you want to know the truth. I think he would've gotten it together just fine on his own." 

"Oh, don't sell yourself so short, Miss Porter. Never forget that I know his background and I knew him well on Sar-Top. He'd been lost in the blackest of voids for quite some time before he came here, well beyond the reach of anyone. He could be so formidable and frightening you never would have recognized him. ... And his reputation! Well, if only half of it is true, then it's no wonder that so few of the inmates ever dared give him any trouble. The bridled rage within him was... Well, I honestly don't believe he was entirely sane, although he certainly passed every test they..."

"He's the sanest individual I've ever known!" Mel indignantly protested, automatically rising to Cole's defense as she always had, not wanting to recognize the portrait being painted of her gentle Cirronian yet a part of her recognizing the cold measure of truth in it all the same. 

She'd seen some of what he was capable of when he'd broken in the door of the motel room and gone after Tevv. She was also well aware that he never had any compunction over threatening a slow and very painful Collection if it suited his purposes – or had any hesitations at all over going through with it. More, her one experience told her that a wholly loving and gentle being could never endure routinely doing what he did, forcibly tearing lifeforces from their bodies and tasting their terror. 

"Yes, that's very true," Lontoria conceded with some amusement. "Cole certainly is entirely sane. But I was speaking of Daggon. Him you never knew at all." 

"But ... aren't they ... the same?"

"Of course they are. Yet they're also not, Miss Porter. They're really very different. Daggon was the one who followed Rhee to this world to hunt him down and slaughter him. And then to bring an end to his own life. Waiting for the opportunity to do so was the only thing that kept him going. This I know." She raised a surprised brow at Mel's shocked expression. "Weren't you aware of that?"

Still trying to cling to the comfort of denial, Mel shook her head. "No. No, it was his job to see that Rhee stayed locked up and..."

"... And he was the only one who could do that?"

"No!" Mel stubbornly insisted. "You've got it all wrong! He ... he came here to recapture Rhee and..."

"Recapture? Is that what he told you?" She faintly smiled. "Or is that only what you want to believe? ... Didn't it ever strike you as strange that he was set up to be the one guarding the murderer of his own family? Didn't you ever ask why or how that came to be? Or why he was the one to pursue him when he escaped? ... Or even wonder why most of the fugitives were so afraid of him?"

Mel gnawed on her lower lip and looked away as the anchor of her denials began to sink, not knowing what to think anymore. She had sometimes wondered about those very things but she'd never asked, never questioned, simply accepted whatever Cole told her without ever digging too deep, oftentimes without digging at all. 

Had she done it again? She'd never questioned Rod about the suspected shady dealings of his business partner or asked him how much he knew or if he might be involved in some way. Instead, she chose to believe that he wasn't a part of it and allowed everything to just slide, an ostrich hiding her head in the sand. Had she behaved the same way with Cole? And if so, then how well did she really know him? 

Surely she couldn't possibly know the inner shadows of his soul as well as one of his own kind, especially one he had been "involved" with somehow or other. "Not as you know it here on Earth," Cole had said of their relationship. Whatever that meant. And she'd never asked for clarification about that, either.

"Daggon needed you in many more ways than you could ever know," Lontoria went on, thinking aloud. "In many more ways, I think, than even _he_ could ever know." Her speculative sidelong glance stopped another of Mel's protests, it weakly dying in her throat. "I haven't any idea what you did or how you did it, but it was far more than I or anyone else ever could. Through you he somehow found himself again. If nothing else, believe that." 

Once again Mel felt herself flushing, but this time with uncertainty. Lontoria was surely exaggerating. She had to be. And she speaking as if she was some sort of miracle worker while she knew she was nothing of the kind. 

"But that's just it," she tried to explain. "I - I didn't _do_ anything! Sometimes I think I was more of a hindrance to him than anything else, one more thing for him to worry about – if only to keep _me_ from worrying!" 

Lontoria openly studied her for a moment, her expression curious. 

"One of these days, Miss Porter, after I've told you his whole story, maybe you'll be able to see your true part in it. Then perhaps you can tell me all about it. I'd very much like to know."

"Please, Lontoria," she uncomfortably demurred, attempting to change the subject. "My name's Mel." 

"Yes, but since I have to play the part of a Human teenager I'd best stay with calling you Miss Porter. If that's okay? And you have to remember to never call me by my given name. I'm Jamie now."

"Yeah, you're right," Mel said, too disconcerted by her own roiling thoughts to do anything but concede to something so minor. "That would probably be best."

"Good. But you must tell me. I last saw Daggon four days ago. He wanted to be sure that I didn't have enough Cirronian energies to register on his sensors ... And he wanted to ... to say good-bye and wish me well..." She wistfully sighed. "I miss him already..."

The way she said it, a haunted echo of regret from their shared past, convinced Mel that there had been far more to their involvement than she could ever know. She stifled the ache of jealousy at the thought, sternly telling herself that it was none of her business, telling herself that her feelings on the matter were totally inappropriate. 

"Anyway, I gather from the news reports that his idea for a remote Collection was successful ... But was he able to make it back to Migar?" 

"Oh, yes. He was able to reopen the wormhole and return ... home ... yesterday, taking all of..." She paused a moment, awkward with her wording. "... All but you with him."

"And you don't approve."

"It was never my call to make," Mel neutrally responded, looking away from that steady, all-seeing blue gaze. 

Although she had well understood Cole's rationale that Lontoria had been grossly manipulated and never deserved Sar-Top in the first place, and she herself was grateful to the woman for literally sacrificing her Cirronian lifeforce so that he could live, his decision to let her remain free had nearly sparked her having an argument with him. It had been her contention that he was too emotionally involved to see the bigger truth, that beyond the crime of treason, which had landed her on Sar-Top, she had killed a young Human girl.

"It wasn't really his call either, Miss Porter," Jamie simply stated. "But he made it anyway. We all know that I should've been Collected." She closed her eyes, as if she found it easier to talk in her own darkness. "Jamie Swenson was such a sweet, gentle and loving child ... Very brave, very stoic in her pain and fear ... And she so very much wanted to live ... On the 805 train when we ... When I..." She drew in a shaky breath to compose herself, then went on. "Two lifeforces cannot occupy the same body and so I became a murderer, no different than the others ... My possession may have served to heal Jamie Swenson's body, but it annihilated her."

"Your lifeforce needed a Human body to survive," Mel reminded her, repeating Cole's reasoning, now even more uncomfortable because Jamie's words were pretty much what she had said to Cole. "And if you had to claim a body, then since Jamie Swenson was dying of..."

"The primal directive of kill or be killed is hardly an excuse," she said with quiet shame, her anger directed solely at herself. "Daggon may have considered those things adequate reasons, but I don't. Jamie Swenson _did_ die. At least a month before her time. And all because of _me._ Every Human on that train died ... Dozens of families were destroyed. People lost their mates, children were denied their parents ... Many hundreds of lives were affected."

"You cannot hold yourself accountable for all of them, Jamie," Mel slowly said, moved in spite of herself by the Cirronian's honest assessment. "Only for the one you took."

"I don't and I do. But I can't ... _I won't_ ... whitewash the magnitude of what happened. Or the horror of knowing that I was enough of a monster to allow myself to be a part of it. Now I'll be spending the rest of my life trying to atone for the murder of Jamie Swenson as well as for committing the crime of treason against my own. And it will never be enough. Nothing I ever do ... will ever be ... enough."

"Yes, you were a monster," Mel said after a moment's pause, having to agree. "Is that what you need to hear? But at least you recognize it and accept the responsibility. I'll give you that much. And I know it's much easier said than done, but dwelling on your past crimes and guilts will only get in the way of doing all you can to make what amends you can. Even if it will never be enough, it will be far more than nothing. You can only go on from here, from where you are in the present, and do your best."

"I know," Jamie said, acknowledging Mel's judgement of her with good grace. "But sometimes I ... I don't know if I can."

"But you must. Didn't you tell Cole that by taking Jamie's dying body you gave her _mother,_ a woman who would've spent the rest of her life grieving big time, new life and hope? That has to count for something, certainly for more than if he'd Collected you and locked you away for the rest of your life." 

"That's what Daggon said. And that I've gone from a lifetime of imprisonment on Sar-Top to a lifetime of self-imprisonment within a stolen Human body."

Mel shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In many respects what Cole had told her was quite true. Jamie was serving the hardest life sentence of all. "Look, morally, ethically, the whole thing may not be entirely right. Hell, if you want to know the truth, I think it really sucks! But it isn't entirely wrong, either. At least something of good may come of it."

"Daggon kept telling me the same thing," she reflected. "Did he finally learn the truth of that from you?"

"I doubt it," Mel derisively snorted, thinking of the two major guilt trips that defined her life.

"Well, I don't. He had a hard time seeing things in shades of gray before." Jamie then seemed to shake herself out of her mood and abruptly changed the subject. "So! What brings you so far from Chicago?"

"I went for a drive," Mel wryly replied, relieved that they had moved to the neutral realm of general chitchat. "And it got a little out of hand. And why are you so far from home? Shouldn't you be in school or something?"

"Not any more. Despite her always delicate health, Jamie Swenson was an honor student with nearly perfect grades. This allowed me to take the State exams and receive my high school diploma a semester sooner. I've earned a full college scholarship – much to Mrs. Swenson's joy and relief – and will be starting classes this summer."

Mel tilted her head toward the textbooks. "You'll be going into pre-med, I assume?"

"Yeah. I've always loved the sciences, but I'm not going anywhere near physics this time. Too many bad memories there, far too many destructive – and self-destructive – choices. I've been given the gift of a second chance here and won't waste it. In this life I intend on specializing in the treatment of genetically based diseases and disorders. Meanwhile, Jamie's mother and I are up here visiting with her sister for a few weeks. My' aunt. This is her store."

"_Ah ha!_ And so you're just marking time working for her?"

"No, I'm only helping out for a few days. My' aunt needed emergency oral surgery and her usual help are all down with the flu." As if suddenly seized with shyness she bowed her head. "Um ... you know ... Daggon advised me that if there was anything I ever needed on this world, especially if I was in need of someone I could freely talk to ... someone who would know and understand who and what I really am ... I was to seek out your council."

Mel blinked at that, startled. "He did?"

"Oh, yeah. And I actually planned on doing so, which is why I'm so very glad to see you. He trusted you, Miss Porter. Totally and implicitly. And of course I'll do the same. I would hope it can be ... mutual?" 

The word seemed to hang in the air between them, a word imbued with many layers of meaning, then the bell above the front door tinkled as the young counterman from the cafe came in, breaking the spell before Mel had a chance to respond.

Jamie looked over at him and gave a long-suffering groan, then stood. "Would you excuse me a moment, please? This Human male seems to have some difficulties in comprehending the meaning of the word no'."

"Oh, believe me, Jamie," Mel laughed, amused in spite of herself. "He's far from unique."

****

**** *** **** *** ****

"Well, now," Mel lightly teased after the disappointed young counterman left, stomping off in a huff of male pique. "Seems you have an ardent admirer."

"No, not me," she said in a troubled tone, staring at her shoes. "It's Jamie who has an ardent admirer."

"That _is_ what I meant." 

"Yeah, well ... She and Stephen have known each other for years. They began dating a few months before her last illness. He's very nice, but he's just a child. And he's a Human child at that."

"But you're Human now. And you're what? Eighteen now? He's only a year or two older than you are. The two of you would make a very cute couple."

Jamie sadly regarded her. "Can you really think it's that simple, Miss Porter?" 

Mel inwardly berated herself for being so flippant, for not seeing the other woman's distress. All outward appearances to the contrary, Jamie was far from being a girl in late adolescence. 

"No, you're right," she apologized. "It isn't. And I'd forgotten. I'm sorry. Your Human host may be a teenager, but you're an adult. This whole thing must be very hard for you." 

"Actually, I'm almost old enough to be Stephen's mother. But that's hardly the point." She tapped the side of her head. "Up here, where it counts, I'm Cirronian and always will be. Not Human." She mirthlessly chuckled to herself, then went on. "Perhaps ... one day ... I might be integrated enough into this shell and into this world to become Human enough to have such an interest but... Well, I don't think it's likely." 

"I ... I'm not sure I follow."

"Don't you? Ask yourself this: how long do you think you would have to live in isolation with a troop of chimpanzees before the males started to appeal to you? A year? Two years? Ten? Or would it never happen at all?"

Mel caught her breath. How could she have been so stupid for so long? How could she not have seen the obvious? Certainly if a sheepherder is horny enough to get it on with his sheep it's considered a gross act of bestiality. Until fairly recently she'd been thinking along much the same lines if a Human got it on with an alien, it never so much as occurring to her that such thinking might work both ways. With the Human being the lower order of life, then wouldn't the alien be inclined to think of it as an unnatural act? And wouldn't it be? 

"I mean no offense, Miss Porter," she quickly continued, as though she thought she'd done just that. "And I certainly don't mean for you to think that I'm equating your people with the other primates of your world. I don't find Humans unpleasant or anything, surely not repulsive, only very ... um ... _uh_..." 

"Physiologically primitive?" Mel supplied, repeating a description Cole once used.

"Well, there's that, since you mention it," Jamie readily admitted. "But beyond just the physically primitive, there's little about a Human male that would ... push the buttons' shall I say? ... for a female of my species. For one thing, they behave very differently and have very different attitudes and expectations. For another, fur and mammalian signatures hold no appeal at all for a Cirronian. And why would they? We're not even mammals." 

Mel digested that with thoughts of Nestov forever behaving like a dog in heat, eagerly sniffing around every reasonably attractive Human female he came across. But even he had all but admitted that he'd simply allowed his own psyche to be subsumed by that his Human host in that regard, never realizing until he'd met Bunny that Humans had so much "activity below the waist," as he had put it. 

And hadn't much the same thing had been true of Cole? He'd backed off from having a relationship with her, nowhere near Human enough to be comfortable with the idea or with what his body was feeling, his excuse being that he couldn't allow himself to "get distracted" from his work. 

And it was only an excuse. She'd known it from the moment he'd uttered it but found herself powerless to offer any objections, unwilling to push him in a direction he clearly didn't want to go. Yet from that point on until the moment he went home, the both of them had been almost constantly distracted by the simple presence of the other... 

__

What utter madness these last few months had been! He had been becoming more Human every day and she had ceased caring that he wasn't... 

Had it only been her imagination or had he seemed to be viewing her in a much different light once it was found out that they shared a heritage? And would that have been enough? Would anything have happened between them, _could_ anything have happened between them, had he stayed and she had the time to come to terms with it all? 

Great, she thought. Now she had several _more_ things to obsess about that didn't matter anymore.

Jamie was chuckling to herself, again without any mirth. "It's just that I still feel so ... Oh, I don't know. Alien, I guess. I look in a mirror and the reflection I see isn't me, isn't even anyone I know. I know it's selfish of me, but it's all so ... so schizoid. This body sometimes reacts in ways that I do not, the memories it harbors aren't my memories or experiences and I just ... Too often I feel so completely estranged from myself, not knowing who or what I am anymore, not even knowing if I can continue to function ... Does this make any sense to you?"

More than you know, Mel admitted to herself. 

"Yes, it does," she told her. "But that body has also supplied you with knowledge and guidance to work from to allow you to do what you must. That's quite an advantage. Cole had to begin from scratch and permit himself to go blank slate like a newborn just to take it all in." 

"But is what I have really such an advantage? He, at least, was always entirely himself, just morphed into another form..." She rubbed at her arms as if suddenly chilled. "Nothing about this body, this life, this world is even _me_..."

What must such a thing be like, Mel wondered, not for the first time: to still be exactly who and what you are but occupying the body of an entirely alien species? Surely it couldn't be as simple as changing one's clothes or putting on a new pair of shoes. What would such a thing do to one's self-image, to one's feelings of self-worth, to one's very sense of identity? How would it be if she woke up one morning to find herself in the body of something else – a gazelle, a giraffe, a tortoise, a dolphin – and having no choice but to live out the rest of her life that way? 

And then the obvious hit her. Jamie was in mourning, now truly alone and destabilized because of it, just as she herself was. For the both of them, the closest connection to who and what they are was gone.

"Then I'll throw it right back to you, Jamie," she said, not without sympathy. "What's your option?"

Jamie gave a self-deprecating grimace. "Touché, Miss Porter."

"I can't say if one can one ever fully adjust to living as what one isn't, to pretending to be what one isn't," Mel opined, her thoughts drifting from the existential who am I?' to Jamie's circumstances and then to her own. She impulsively reached over and squeezed the other woman's forearm, feeling the need to offer what little solace she could. "But if it's any help, I do know that Cole ... Daggon ... was becoming more and more Human all the time in both his manners and feelings. Even in his understandings. And as time went on he seemed to be becoming more at ease with all of it and settling in. Don't you find that to be true with yourself? Even just a little?"

Jamie shrugged abstractedly. "There are many things that transcend species lines and Mrs. Swenson is a great help without even realizing it. Her love for her daughter is so selflessly pure and genuine she could almost be Cirronian. And I've come to truly love her. Yet still I so miss my own world and the company of my own ... Although you'd think with nearly two years imprisoned on Sar-Top I'd be well used to it by now..." She bitterly sighed, resigned. "There were only fourteen of us there, you see. I was the sole Cirronian female. And Daggon, of course, was the only Cirronian guard. He always looked out for me, was there to ease my pain, and now that he's gone..." 

She stared off into space, lost in the private landscape of memory, then she turned, the dawning of surprised realization on her face. 

"Was it very difficult for you, Miss Porter? I mean, him looking so Human and then seeming to become so? Is that what some of this is about for you?"

"Yeah, that's part of it," Mel hesitantly admitted after a few beats, Jamie's open trust starting to inspire her own. "A major part of it," she said more firmly. "I ... I allowed myself to care too much, to get too attached. If you can believe it, for a time I even deluded myself into thinking that..." She nervously cleared her throat and thickly swallowed, only to feel the lump quickly reforming itself. "Never mind. It doesn't matter anymore ... If it ever did..."

"You fell in love with him," Jamie said with quiet wonder. It was a statement, not a question.

Mel shook her head. If she wasn't careful, she was going to start crying again and she really didn't want to do that. "I - I don't know what I feel anymore. And I'm not sure I want to. All I know is that he was ... is ... the most amazing..." Her throat seized and she allowed herself to trail off, unwilling to finish the thought, unwilling to give it the full reality of the spoken word.

"I'm sorry for all the confusion he must have inadvertently brought you, Miss Porter. I truly am. I know it's of little comfort, but surely you must realize that regardless of what he looked like, regardless of how much empathy and understanding he developed or how he schooled himself to behave, beneath it all he was even less Human than I am." 

"Yeah, I know." Mel began to laugh as the full truth of that washed over her, but tried to rein it in. Even to her own ears her voice had a slightly hysterical edge. "What is, is. Right? I've always known. But now I've found out that the same is true of me."

"Excuse me? The same what is true of you?"

Jamie quizzically tilted her head and Mel had to look away. Her attitude, her gesture and her expression were all too reminiscent of Cole when he was puzzled about something.

"Um ... How much did he tell you about ... his last few weeks here, the things that happened?"

"Not much. Only that I wouldn't have to concern myself about Zin anymore ... He said that he'd locked him away ... I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he seemed so distant and distracted that I didn't ask for any details."

So Cole hadn't shared everything with her, Mel thought. Then again, she was just beginning to understand that despite his apparent openness he likely kept a great deal to himself, perhaps more than she could even guess at. 

"Then he didn't tell you about me?" she pressed.

"I'm sorry, Miss Porter, but I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay. Um ... have you..." She took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts. "Have you ever heard of the Keepers of a Dark Secret?"

"The Gatekeepers? Sure. What Cirronian hasn't? They've been an inspiration for a good many of our art forms, music and writings for a long time now. Sort of like your various religious and cultural mythologies are. Why do you ask?"

"Gatekeepers?" Mel repeated. "Cole didn't tell me anything about any kind of gate. _What_ gate?"

Jamie chuckled indulgently at Mel's befuddlement. "Well, like the Dark Secret itself, that kind of depends on the artist. They've come up with all sorts of ideas, some of epic proportions."

Mel steadied herself. She wasn't about to let a new word derail her now. She'd worry about it later. "Okay ... So are any of those ideas about the creation of bloodlines?"

"Yeah, some of the stories are about things like that. Why do you want to know?"

"Well, it seems that I ... I'm ... part Cirronian." 

Jamie was looking at her with blank perplexity, so Mel elaborated, "Apparently, my ancestors were part of a Migar breeding program of some kind and I'm of a created bloodline. A so-called Keeper ... Gatekeeper ... Whatever."

Jamie's expression turned frankly incredulous.

"Where did you ever get such an idea?"


	10. Chapter 10

****

Chapter 10

Watching Jamie wear a trench in the floor, Mel found herself idly wondering if all Cirronians are in the habit of pacing when they become agitated. Jamie, however, was far more animated about it, far less self-contained and tightly wound than Cole ever was. She'd jumped up and begun pacing midway through her recounting of events and hadn't so much as paused yet.

"That doesn't ... I mean, you _do_ realize that a Collector is a biomechanical device?"

Of course she knew, Mel affirmed. She'd once watched Cole construct a backup one for himself incorporating clones of his own living nerve cells into it. He'd explained that it was thus automatically keyed to Cirronian energies in general and his energy signature in particular, becoming an extension of himself. 

"Well, all biomechanicals have a tendency to get a bit twitchy sometimes. It's in their nature. If you activated it, then it was probably due to nothing more than a ... a glitch, a simple malfunction."

"It wasn't a malfunction," Mel patiently explained. "Or a tic or a twitch or a glitch or the hole in the ozone layer or anything like that. Cole checked. And the second time I activated it I ... I Collected a Vardian."

Wide-eyed, Jamie stopped dead in her tracks. _"YOU Collected a!?!_... Activating it is one thing. It may be rare, but it isn't totally unheard of. But... No, the neural connections could _not_ have been made! It simply _isn't _possible! And the Keepers' are only ancient myth!"

"Like the Brac is?" Mel shot back.

Jamie shook her head as she flopped gracelessly back on her stool, grumbled a Cirronian expletive, then switched back to English. "I don't understand any of this!"

"So what's to understand? It's as you said before: either a matter of a Cape Cod and a skyscraper or, more likely, a test tube and a pipette." 

"That's ... No!" Jamie shook her head in horrified disbelief, refusing to even consider the possibility. "We wouldn't do that! We _couldn't!_"

"So, what, then?" Mel argued. "I'm supposed to be a figment of my own imagination?"

"No, of course not. But what you're suggesting goes against everything we..."

"Against everything you guys are supposed to believe in and stand for?" Mel felt the heat of anger starting to rise. "_Grow up, Jamie!_ The Age of Innocence is long gone! Governments keep secrets; they hide things; they LIE! _ALL of them!_ Even yours. And I'm the living proof of it. No ancient myth could've re-energized Cole's polarities. And neither could a full-blooded Human. You _know_ that!"

"We're not capable of being that amoral!" Jamie stubbornly maintained.

"Oh? Do you know that for a fact? Or is that only what you want to believe?"

"But we've never, _never_ altered the biology of any sentient species!"

"Really?" Mel sarcastically countered. "So what are Humans to you people, then? Chopped liver?"

__

"Prove it!" Jamie suddenly seized Mel's hand and placed it on her breast over her heart, firmly holding it in place. "Do it! Re-energize _me!_"

__

"I CAN'T!" Mel angrily wrenched her hand free, reclaiming it so suddenly that Jamie was nearly knocked over. _"I don't know how I did it!"_ She stared at her palm, reliving again that split second jolt of raw power and the tingling sensation of a scorching yet painless rush, her anger abruptly defusing. "But even if I did, I don't know how to control it ... I ... I could hurt you. Or worse." She apologetically looked into Jamie's stunned face. "I'm sorry."

__

God! Mel knew that she had a temper and was very well aware that it sometimes got away from her. She wasn't proud of it, but there it was. How many times in her life had this dangerous power coiled within her, primed and ready but wholly unrealized? It was a damn good thing that she _didn't_ know how to use it, that she _didn't_ know how to unleash it! 

"I'm sorry, too, Miss Porter," Jamie apologized in turn. "And I do believe you. I don't want to ... But I do."

"You know what this has been like for me the past few weeks, Jamie?" Mel dully asked, thinking aloud. "There was this woman I knew some years back in my sophomore English Lit class who went off the deep end after her parents were killed in an auto accident. It was hard enough that they died so tragically, but she could almost cope with it ... What she couldn't cope with at all was finding out that they weren't her real parents, that she'd been adopted – _and that they'd never told her_ ... I didn't understand her reaction at the time. I mean, they were good people and she was deeply and truly loved ... I didn't see why it should matter so terribly much ... But I do now ... As dysfunctional as my family life and upbringing were, I ... I..."

"... You at least thought they were _yours,_" Jamie gently finished, taking both her hands in hers to offer a reassuring squeeze. "And now you no longer know who or what you are or where you came from and nothing about your life makes any sense anymore. You've found that your mirror lies to you and you need to know what's real."

Mel nodded, somehow not at all surprised that she understood, a detached part of herself noting that somewhere along the line Jamie had become an adult to her eyes, no visage of the teenager remaining, although she couldn't say at what point that transformation had occurred.

"Now, all this explains your confusion. But why the fear?" Jamie pressed. "What are you so afraid of?"

__

"You have to look deep inside you, find that one thing you've always been afraid of..."

Mel looked askance. How could she possibly explain it without going into her convoluted personal history? 

As one of the enduring legacies of her father abandoning her to his mother when he blithely went off to begin another family, all her life she'd always felt unwanted and only second-best, felt that her thoughts, her feelings, her wants, needs, hopes, dreams and desires didn't matter, that she _herself_ didn't matter. 

It had been a long and uphill battle to claim validation for herself, to finally believe she had true meaning and worth. Finding out that she was but a replaceable, pre-designed cog in a design she couldn't fully comprehend had thrown her back to the very beginning, back to no longer being in control of her life. 

And she badly needed that control. Without it she felt just as she had for most of her childhood: weak, fearful and vulnerable, at the whim and mercy of others, a helpless victim. 

And how else could she explain the inexplicable, from being unable to leave Cole by the side of the road to blindly driving nearly 400 miles from home only to end up here, at the very place where Jamie was, other than to think that her life was well beyond her control, that she was being manipulated, that her free will, her autonomy, her very Humanity had somehow been stripped from her? 

"I won't allow myself be used," she finally chose to say, tersely holding her despair in check. "I can't accept it. I _won't_ accept it! Not by the Cirronians, not by _anyone!_ Not for any reason!"

"And what is it you want to know?" Jamie continued to probe.

"I ... I want to know what the Cirronians did to me and when they began doing it. I want to know exactly how they did it and why they did it ... And I want to know where the hell they get off doing _any_ of it, expecting Humans to pay for their own screw-ups in dealing with the Brac! _That's _what I want to know!"

"Then let me help you."

"Help?" Mel echoed. For some unaccountable reason her brain functioning had gone sluggish. "That's sweet of you, Jamie ... Really ... But I ... I don't know if it's such a good idea. I shouldn't have even told you about this, shouldn't have burdened you. You have a new life and I..."

"Miss Porter. Please." She reached over to push one of Mel's stray curls out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear. "Daggon owes you a very great debt. Permit me to pay some of it for him."

"A debt?" she echoed again. "Oh no. No, I never asked for..."

"... I know you haven't. And that's why he owes it. And I certainly owe him. But it's more than just that. It's ... I had no idea my people would ever do such things. It angers me and it deeply shames me. And I have to know how far they took it and exactly what they did and for what purpose. Just as you do. Don't you see? We both need to know who we are and where we come from and what we've now become. I think we can help each other."

"Really? You think so?"

"Yeah. Don't you?"

"_Mmm._ Maybe," Mel doubtfully said, uncertain of how Jamie or anyone could possibly help. "I'm sure Cole didn't know such things were happening, either. He was totally dumfounded."

"Well, how did he try to explain it? What exactly did he tell you?"

"What he told me was ... Oh, what does it matter? It isn't true what he said. That much I know."

Jamie's brow furrowed. "He told you that ... Cirronians came here and paired up with Humans?"

"Something like that..." she admitted. 

__

Or maybe I just heard it that way because I wanted to, she thought, a part of her still needing to give Cole the benefit of her doubts and trying to ignore the little voice in her head snidely asking how _else_ should she have interpreted the word mated'. 

"He might have told you that because that's what you needed to hear," Jamie thoughtfully said. "Or perhaps he just didn't know what else to say. Perhaps both." 

"I don't _know!_" Mel nearly sobbed. "I don't know _anything_ anymore!"

"Listen to me!" Jamie took Mel by her shoulders and nearly shook her, forcing her to meet her eyes. "You are still exactly who and what you were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, twenty years ago. What has changed – the _only_ thing that has changed – are your reference points. All we have to do is determine the new coordinates. Understand? Everything else will follow from there."

Mel dumbly nodded and pulled away. "Just ... What do your stories ... legends ... myths ... whatever ... say about the creation of bloodlines?"

"Look, forget the myths and legends!" Jamie told her, impatiently waving a dismissive hand. "They're irrelevant and of little or no help here. In order to do what you did, something of you certainly has to be Cirronian. I must agree with Daggon on that. There's no other rational explanation. Yet while a Human-morphed Cirronian and a Human could probably mate if they chose to, it's a biological impossibility for them..."

"... For them to have kids? And you're absolutely positive about that?"

__

"Yes!" Jamie flatly stated as she turned to resume her agitated pacing. "The Human genetic code bears a far greater similarity to that of a ... a lobster. A mosquito. A crocodile. Or to any other lifeform on your planet than it does to that of a Cirronian. We have nearly three times the chromosomes that Humans do, our gene counts, their pairings, their sequencings, their loci, even the structure of the helix itself are all completely different because we are completely different, another species of another order of life entirely. It couldn't possibly happen."

"Yeah, well, I guess I kind of had that one figured out already," Mel grimly muttered, resigning herself to the realm of freakdom. "Just double-checking. And could you _please_ stop with the pacing? I'm spraining my neck just watching you!"

As if not hearing, Jamie continued pacing back and forth, talking to herself in her own language.

"Jamie, please! If you have any thoughts just spit them out!"

"Oh, believe me, I could hazard any number of guesses, most of which wouldn't make any sense to you and would be near impossible to explain. There are entire realms of things your science knows nothing about yet, some they likely won't know about for centuries ... Anyway, they'd only be guesses. So, why should we bother with speculation when I can find out what was done for certain?"

That brought Mel up short. "You ... You can do that?"

"Of course I can! What, did you think that Daggon is the only capable Cirronian in this galaxy?" She slapped a hand on top of her stack of textbooks. "Jamie Swenson, budding geneticist, at your service."

"But you haven't even begun your classes yet!" Mel reminded her. 

"Miss Porter, one of the more difficult things about playing the role of a Human – _especially_ that of a teenage Human – is having to dumb myself down. Although genetics certainly wasn't my field, I happen know a great deal. It's still a relatively new science to your species and your knowledge of it – if these texts are any indication – is full of uncertainties and misunderstandings. To us, it's very ancient history and a well-understood fact of life. And I _do_ know how to properly conduct research."

"And knowing these ... um ... new coordinates' will help point out the answers to my other questions?" Mel timidly asked, almost afraid to hope.

"Exactly! The what' will answer most of the how'. The why' will probably require more digging, but we just might learn what directions to look. Got it?"

"Yeah!"

"So, do you know if Daggon's computer array is still operational? He certainly must have Cirronian genome mappings among his files. But just to be on the safe side, I want you to save his hairbrush as a backup. Do you know if his programs and files are still functional and accessible?"

Mel thought about that a moment, her spirits rising for the first time in weeks. "Um ... I think so. I don't think he turned anything off or trashed anything, if that's what you mean. You've seen his ... War Room?"

"About two months back. I was in town and stopped by to ask him something. I missed meeting you then. I think he said that you were out on a date, so..." Jamie began to mumble to herself again, becoming distracted as she worked out problems and procedures in her head. "_Hmm._ Unfortunately, I don't have my energies and won't be able to go through his inaja'ma'ag... That could be a problem, but I can at least read all the languages..."

"Inaja'ma'ag'?" Mel repeated. The word had a ring of familiarity.

"His ... You know..." Jamie danced the fingers of one hand in the air. "What he used instead of a keyboard."

"Oh!" Mel said, the pantomime motion allowing her to make the connection. "The thingamajig."

"Thingamajig?" Jamie grinned. "Really? Is that what you call it?"

Mel laughed. "Well, it's easier to pronounce and it's sure not any kind of keyboard I've ever seen!"

"Well, of course it isn't. It's another biomechanical. I guess I'll just have to manage with a regular Human-style keyboard ... Far more ponderous but not impossible."

"With some adjustments?" Mel couldn't resist asking with teasing amusement. In her own way, Jamie was every bit as single-mindedly intense as Cole was when hot on a Track.

"Probably. But I'll manage," Jamie replied, missing Mel's wry reference. "I'm going to have to do a protein and amino acid study, an RNA breakdown and a complete DNA analysis of... Wait a second. Didn't Daggon at least start on some of this?"

Mel shook her head. "No. He wanted to but I ... I pushed him away. I didn't know we were running out of time and I was still too afraid to face..."

Once again the bell above the front door tinkled, announcing company. 

"_Yoo hoo!_ Miss Swenson! We're here!"

A gaggle of excited children – several dozen second and third graders strong – were disembarking from a yellow school bus parked just outside and nosily filing into the pet shop two by two.

"Great, Mrs. Martin," Jamie called out to the stout woman holding the door open for them. "I'll be with you in a few minutes." She turned back to Mel, leaning in and raising her voice slightly to be heard above the growing volume of strident children's voices. "The local elementary schools have arranged with my' aunt to use the store for some of their science field trips," she explained. "These children are so young that they still have short attention spans so this lesson shouldn't take more than an hour or so. If you could wait until..."

"Sure, but would it accomplish anything if I did?" Mel anxiously glanced at the assembling children and checked her watch. Her few moments' detour into this pet shop had turned into nearly two hours. It was now almost eleven. "I mean, um, could we really begin this today without Cole's computer? I do have a long drive home..."

"No, you're right," Jamie sighed with frustration. "It wouldn't be worth your while. Or mine. I really can't accomplish very much at all without that computer setup of his to work from."

"Then how should we do this?"

Jamie thought a moment, her expression becoming troubled. "Tell you what," she slowly said. "I'll be returning to Saginaw Falls in just a few weeks, three weeks at the outside. I'll call you as soon as I'm back and we'll make arrangements then. Okay? Can you hold on for answers until then?"

"Are you kidding me!? Until a few minutes ago I didn't think I'd ever have any answers at all!" She impulsively hugged her. "Oh, thank you, Jamie! Thank you!"

"Don't thank me just yet, Miss Porter," Jamie warned, drawing back. "Some of these answers might not be anything that you'd ... want to know. Understand?"

"Yeah," Mel slowly acknowledged, sobering. "I do."

"No. You only think that you do," Jamie told her, making direct eye contact to drive home her point. "This delay is probably for the good. It gives you time to reconsider."

"Why should I be reconsidering?" Mel asked, holding her gaze.

Jamie faintly smiled, but the smile didn't extend to her eyes.

"That's something only you can decide."

**__**

Meanwhile, 100.3 light years away in the Migar Solar System...   
To be continued in Beneath It All, Part 3.


End file.
